A Wizard Named Harry
by Bugz-Toon
Summary: Harry Dresden has taken a lot of blows to the head over his career, and woken up in a lot of interesting places, but... aboard the Hogwarts Express in the body of an eleven-year-old boy with a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead? Yeah, that's a new one. Most people, they'd just enjoy the ride, but Dresden has read the books, and he REALLY doesn't like dark wizards...
1. Chapter 1

What idiot gives pixies flamethrowers? Well, okay, tiny magical fire-rod things, but still… basically flamethrowers. If you know _anything_ about the little folk, you know that they have a tendency to be kind of singleminded. And giving flower-fairies large quantities of fire is just asking for trouble, given that the inevitable result is that they accidentally torch a flower, or even just realize that doing so is a possibility, panic, and then everything in a five-mile radius winds up burned to the ground.

And why do I keep getting caught in burning buildings?

I ducked and hunched my shoulders a bit, to let a streak of fire splash off my duster (magical reinforcement. Handy stuff), and shook my shield bracelet out of my sleeve. I fed a trickle of will into it, and my shield snapped into existence around me as a semitransparent dome. Another random burst of flame skittered across it, and I stared at the mess.

Molly popped into existence behind me, nearly making me jump out of my skin. And, incidentally, straight into the whirling vortex of flame that this crummy warehouse was rapidly becoming. That girl was getting way too good with her veils.

"Boss? If we don't make it through this, I just want you to know…" she paused, and her tone was grave enough that I actually glanced back. "I… I just want you to know… this is all your fault."

"Thanks." I responded drily. "But have a little faith, grasshopper. Don't I always have a plan?"

Molly shrugged, sighing heavily. This caused some rather interesting maneuvers slightly below shoulder level, but I very carefully didn't notice them. The young Miss Carpenter might be built like a weightlifter's dream, but she was my apprentice. That and having those kinds of thoughts about someone you've known since they were small enough to think boys were icky is just weird.

"Insubordination will get you nowhere, grasshopper." I noted as sternly as I could manage.

"Is that why you're still stuck in this crummy burg, boss?" she chirped.

It was my turn to sigh. I shook my head and grabbed my blasting rod. Pointedly ignoring Molly's raised eyebrow, I focused my will. I'd only pulled this trick off a few times before. Come to think of it, the first time wasn't long before Molly became my apprentice. But it was the sort of… creative thinking… that masters usually discouraged in their apprentices. Mostly because it was tricky- the sort of tricky that ends in craters more often than not.

Tricky, I have to admit, I'm not that great at. But creative? Creative I can do.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the energies filling the area, and after a few seconds, the heat was suddenly gone. In concept, it was pretty simple; rather than fuelling the fire spell I had prepared with my magic and will, I'd simply pulled heat out of the general area. This had the happy side effect of starving all the various fires nearby (and confusing the hell out of the pixies), but as I prepared to gloat about my success, I realized two things.

First, that the heat that was no longer in the general area was now (barely) contained in a pulsating red glow around the tip of my blasting rod, and second, I was still inside a building whose no-longer-burning state was going to be very, very temporary.

"Molly? Now might be a good time to run." I suggested in a strained voice.

I didn't bother looking to see what happened- I think Molly might have gathered up the pixies as best she could on the way out, but I was too busy aiming my shuddering, smoking blasting rod at a segment of roof that I was hoping was thinner than the other bits.

Things got very bright and very loud after that. My memories are pretty jumbled, but I do remember the sickening sensation of being smashed over the head with something heavy. It was, by this point, familiar enough to be almost comforting.

When my head cleared enough to think again, I was more than a little confused to feel rhythmic motion and a steady click-clack through the floor. Some part of my befuddled brain reported in that I was probably on a train. I hoped the part reporting wasn't my subconscious. The guy's a jerk.

I dragged my eyes open, actually remembering not to shake my head this time. World-spinning nausea on top of a splitting headache just didn't do it for me anymore.

Hey, even I learn eventually.

I was lying on a fairly nice plush carpet in a... cabin?.. compartment?.. train room... that looked weirdly ornate.

And, somewhat to my confusion, there were two kids bending over me, a boy and a girl, about ten or eleven years old.

"Harry? Are you alright?" the boy asked.

Well now, this was interesting. Two kids I had never seen before apparently knew who I was. Although... huh. Now that my brain was clearing a bit, I had to admit they looked a bit familiar. The only problem was, things were still kind of out-of-focus.

I closed my eyes again for a second, took a deep breath, and then hoisted myself to my feet. I couldn't put my finger on it, but for some reason I wanted to be at my full height to deal with these kids, so I stood up as straight and tall as I could.

When I opened my eyes again, I was staring straight into Hermione's eyes as she held a pair of glasses out to me.

Somewhere between my brain and my mouth, my blurted 'Stars and stones!' turned into a groan of "Oh, bugger..."

**BRIEF AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
** Just so you all know, I'm planning on updating weekly, at least until I manage to pooch my buffer by being lazy. So expect updates regularly on weekends for at least the next couple of months.

Also, for those that are curious, the Dresden Files end of things is set somewhere between Turn Coat and Changes.


	2. Chapter 2

Hermione gave me a curious look as I took back the... my... glasses, and I shrugged, sliding them on.

"What happened, anyhow?" she asked. "I was helping Neville look for his toad, you'd just been no help at all, and then right after we left, Ron started yelling something and I came back to find you on the floor. Neville's gone off to find a prefect or something." she finished absently.

I shook my head carefully. When it failed to fall off, I shook it again, just for good measure.

"I don't know what happened." I said, perfectly truthfully. "I just woke up doing a close inspection of the carpet."

Ron snorted, and even Hermione looked briefly amused as she claimed a seat. At the back of my mind, I could almost hear Murph making snide comments about my humour finally finding an audience immature enough to appreciate it.

I hesitated for a moment, but then continued "I'm still feeling a bit..."

Of course, at that moment, a kid that looked like an aristocratic blonde weasel barged in, flanked by a pair of prepubescent goons.

"Is it true?" he said. "They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?"

I just sighed and nodded. This kid was sizing me up like a piece of meat. It was kind of an unsettling sensation, especially since Malfoy wasn't even old enough to have his voice crack yet. I gave Crabbe and Goyle a quick glance. Knowing the plot in advance was starting to weird me out a little, and it really didn't help that I kept wanting to call the pair mini-Hendricks-one and -two.

Draco, apparently misunderstanding my look, introduced the pair, then himself.

Ron made a choking noise that was probably a stifled snigger, but before the visibly-bridling Malfoy could say anything, I interrupted.

"Draco?" I said incredulously. "I think that's Latin for 'bloody hell, the birth control failed', isn't it?" I looked at Crabbe and Goyle again. "And... you seriously have _goons_? You're not even twelve yet! Why do you need goons?"

Malfoy had stiffened to the point that I was seriously tempted to try and tip him over. Furious pink marks had appeared on his pale cheeks, making him look a bit like he was wearing clown makeup. Crabbe and Goyle just looked kind of confused, much to my lack of surprise. Before they could do anything, though, I abruptly stood and faced Malfoy down.

I'm not totally sure what I planned to do- I'm not much of a fighter. Murph could probably dismantle me with both hands tied behind her back, but I had been paying attention to the self-defense lessons she had tried to drill into my thick skull.

Lots of people (and for that matter, things that aren't exactly people) might want to kill me, but I don't plan on making it easy for them. And if Crabbe or Goyle went for me, well, it wouldn't be the first time that something bigger and stronger than me had tried to grind me into the floor.

Yeah, that was probably a dumb play. I knew that the Harry that originally inhabited this body didn't like Malfoy either, but I had a feeling I was escalating things a lot faster than they would have otherwise. But... Hell's bells. I _don't_ like bullies.

Draco sputtered a little, then made to grab for his wand. Apparently he'd gotten mad enough that he'd forgotten his goons. He _was_ new at this, wasn't he?

I just cleared my throat.

"You pull your wand, and I'll take it away and ram it so far up your nose that you'll be sneezing pixie dust out your ears." I growled squeakily.

Stars and stones, I sounded ridiculous with this little-kid voice. Surprisingly, though, Malfoy actually hesitated. His goons looked at me, then at him. I leaned forward aggressively, more to hide the shaking in my knees than anything else.

At that point the inner voice that had been trying to warn me that I knew was coming next got externalized.

"You really shouldn't fight, you know." Hermione declared sanctimoniously. "You'll get in trouble before we even see the school."

" Not **now**, Hermione!" Ron and I blurted out simultaneously.

Malfoy, sensing an out, rounded on the girl. His paired goons moved to flank him again, and Hermione shrank back a little on her seat as the trio loomed over her.

"And what do we have here?" Draco sneered.

"Hermione Granger." she managed to say.

My eyes narrowed. Once again, I knew what was coming next.

"Granger... Granger..." Draco mused. "I don't think I recognize the name from any of the old wizarding families... are you sure you're a proper witch?"

Crabbe and Goyle snickered, apparently on cue. Or maybe they thought they were contributing, I'm not sure.

Hermione gave them a wary look, but said "I'm muggle born."

"Hmm... perhaps we should go. I don't want to be sharing the car with a mudblood. Or worse still, a Weasley." Draco commented, curling his lip. The two goons sniggered.

Hermione looked blank, Ron looked outraged, but I ignored both of them. If there's anything I hate more than bullies, it's bullies who go after girls.

"Can't handle the boy who lived, so you have to go after a girl, huh, Drakey?" I sneered, stepping forward.

Then I blinked. Ron was in Malfoy's face, his own face nearly as red as his hair. I'm not even sure how he got around me. Malfoy simply gave him a cool glare, confident in the fact that even one of his goons made nearly two of Ron. And, indeed, Crabbe... or maybe Goyle... grabbed Ron's arm as the smaller boy wound up to slug Malfoy in his smug face.

"It's not hard to know who you are, Weasley. My father always said that all Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford." Draco sniffed, doing his best to look like he hadn't flinched when Ron started to swing.

The cool stare was transferred to me. "And I don't need to 'handle' you, Potter. You would have been a convenience, but you're hardly as vital as you seem to think you are."

He turned to sweep out, and that probably would have been the end of that, at least for the moment. Or at least, it would have been, if I hadn't burst out laughing.

"Did you rehearse that, or are you imitating something you heard your father say?" I managed to stammer out between howls of laughter.

Stars and stones, he sounded silly! A little boy imitating... I don't know, Dr. Doom or something. Unfortunately, this time, he remembered his goons. Still in full-blown mini-Lucius mode, he snapped his fingers imperatively.

Fortunately, the only effect this had was to make mini-Hendricks-one and -two stare at him blankly. Well, that and to make me laugh harder.

"Get him, you pair of idiots!" Malfoy snapped after a moment of fuming.

I shook my head, still chuckling, although I kept a wary eye on the pair of goons. I didn't really need to say anything. _Like that's ever stopped you before._ my subconscious noted. _Shut up_. I retorted wittily, settling into what Murphy called a 'modified' aikido stance. When she was feeling charitable, anyhow. When she wasn't, she called it a 'mangled' aikido stance.

Crabbe and Goyle hesitated in their advance, though, when the traincar door slid open. Again. A kid who looked like a taller, dorkier version of Ron stuck his head in. _Kid?_ my subconscious echoed. _He's a good six years older than you. Well, than you are now, anyhow._

I really wish my subconscious wasn't quite so smug.

"Everyone alright, he... oi, what's going on?" he demanded.

Crabbe and Goyle lowered their arms a bit too late and looked uncertainly at Malfoy. I could almost see the options flickering through his brain. After a moment, he apparently decided on the 'untouchable child of priviledge' option.

"Don't strain yourself, Weasley." he sneered. It seemed to be his default expression. "We were just having a... discussion... with Potter, here."

I traded glances with Ron, who shook his head slightly, his expression clearly asking me not to get his older brother involved in this. I nodded a little in return, thinking fast.

"Yes, we were just talking." I said, then hesitated. "Only... well, I grew up in the Muggle world, and there's still some things I don't understand."

Percy nodded encouragingly. And pompously. I could see why Ron didn't want him involved. Ron was giving me a worried stare, Malfoy a wary one. Hermione was giving Percy a calculating look. And Crabbe and Goyle were staring blankly into space, apparently waiting for the next thought to turn up.

"What's a mudblood?" I asked innocently. "Only," I continued over Percy's shocked intake of breath, pointing first at Malfoy, then Hermione, "he called her one, and I don't think I really underst..."

There was quite a bit of shouting after that point, teachers were brought in, Malfoy and cronies were hauled out, and it was carefully explained to me that 'mudblood' was a bad word in a lecture that was only cut short by Percy wanting to lecture Draco even more than he he wanted to lecture me.

Once things settled down a bit, and Ron, Hermione and I were able to return to our seats, Ron gave me a look. It was familiar. Half-admiring terror with a generous helping of disbelief.

"I can't believe you just did that!" Ron blurted. "I'm not sure if that was brilliant or completely stupid."

"I hear that a lot." I said.

Then Hermione finished whatever train of thought she was pursuing, and half-turned to Ron.

"That was your brother, then?" she asked. "And a prefect, too." she continued, without bothering to wait for a response.

Ron was looking increasingly pained. Then again, thinking about it, depending on how much the books got right, he really did have some self-esteem issues from being the youngest.

Hermione turned the rest of the way towards Ron and pursed her lips thoughtfully. "He's a complete tit, isn't he?"

Ron and I exchanged stunned looks. Well, at least we did once I finished trying not to choke, anyhow. Then Ron returned his stare to Hermione and just nodded mutely.

"That's very strange." Hermione continued as matter-of-factly as she could with her voice shaking a little. I was only half-listening while some part of my brain reminded me that 'tit' had a completely different meaning here in Britland.

"Hogwarts is the very best school of witchcraft and wizardry there is. So it would stand to reason that their teachers would be the very best also." Hermione paused, drawing in a breath. "Then why would they appoint someone who is clearly not in touch with what the other students are thinking as Prefect, when the whole point of a Prefect is to have someone who is better-able to understand the students' mindset to help with discipline? It doesn't make sense for them to have made a mistake like that!"

"Percy's always been good at sucking up." Ron muttered darkly.

" But that shouldn't _matter_!" Hermione nearly wailed.

"Teachers are still people too, Hermione." I said bluntly. "They're going to make mistakes sometimes."

She gave me a look that suggested as clearly as a five-page essay (neatly printed and single-spaced, of course) that this was something she considered about as likely as the train abruptly forming a conga line and dancing the rest of the way to Hogwarts. But I was pretty sure that there had been some seeds of doubt planted.

I didn't worry about it too much. I was busy running over in my mind everything I could remember about the book series. I wished, once again, that Lash was still lurking in my head. The constant temptations I could live without, but it was damn handy having someone with perfect recall living in there.

_For a quite literal value of 'damn' handy,_ I reminded myself with a sigh. _So, priority one is to get myself a secure spot to write all this down while it's still fresh and not garbled by living through bits of it. Priority two, I think, is going to be getting in to see Dumbledore and getting him to believe any of this._

_Of course, with my luck, the only result I'm likely to get is for people to start thinking the 'boy who lived' has a brain that didn't._ I finished glumly.

The rest of the train ride was spent in silence, staring grimly out the window as I strained to remember every detail I could. Ron tried to say something a few times, but was eventually reduced to listless nibbling on the pile of candy I'd never even really registered was there. Well, except to nibble absent-mindedly on it myself.

My most immediate worry was what the Sorting Hat was going to make of me. I didn't like the idea of a magical artifact dredging around in my cranium at the best of times, and being magically stuffed into the skull of a small boy who wound up being the focus of pretty much every major event in the country for the next seven years didn't exactly qualify as the 'best of times'.

_ Also, I'm __**really**__ not looking forward to going through puberty again. The first time was bad enough._ I thought.

So I wasn't really in the best frame of mind when the announcement came that the train had arrived at Hogwarts. Both Ron and Hermione looked in my direction at my sudden intake of breath when the announcement came, and I was vaguely relieved to see that Ron was a bit pale under his freckles, and even Hermione looked troubled.

There wasn't much to be said, though, and no time to say it, so we gathered our robes about us and sallied forth. I'm not sure what's up with wizards and their seemingly instinctual attraction to robes, but apparently it's a multiversal thing. I had been a bit confused as to why Ron kicked Hermione out for us to put our robes on, given that all we did was slide them on over our clothes, but whatever. She rejoined us soon enough, wearing her robes as well and watching the two of us speculatively.

As the train jolted to a stop, Ron blurted "Oh! The sweets!" and started shovelling candy into his pockets. For lack of anything much better to do, I joined in. I knew we were headed to a feast anyhow, but there didn't seem to be a lot of point in wasting them. You never know where your next junk food is going to come from, after all.

I followed Ron and Hermione out of the train and onto a tiny dark platform that was thronging with students. It was nearly pitch black, and miserably cold. Part of me was half-expecting a Wilhelm scream as some nameless student plummeted off the edge of the platform into the darkness below.

Then a lantern bobbed into view, and I had a brief flash of paranoia as I realized that it was much too high for a human to be carrying it.

Then a booming voice rang out, and I remembered Hagrid. "Firs' years! Firs' years over here! All right there, Harry?"

I nodded, even though there was probably no way Hagrid could see me, but maybe he did, because he continued "C'mon, follow me – any more firs' years? Mind yer step now! Firs' years follow me!"

A string of kids straggled after the bearded giant, stumbling down the steep path in the thick darkness. I could feel trees pressing in on either side, and shuddered., Nobody said anything, although there was the occasional sniffle from somewhere near me.

"Yeh'll get yer firs' sight o' Hogwarts in a sec, jus' round this bend here." Hagrid called, and there was a collective "Oooooh!" from almost everyone. Have to admit, I was one of them.

An absolutely magnificent castle clung to the crags, windows glittering in the starlight as we came out from under the trees. Even Arctis Tor hadn't been quite this stunning. Of course, Mab's sense of aesthetics was... interesting... so that might be moot.

"No more'n four to a boat!" Hagrid called, waving his lantern over a fleet of little boats bobbing gently in the lakewater.

There was some scrambling and quiet muttering as the flock of eleven-year-olds jostled and jockeyed for position. I joined Ron in a boat, more or less on autopilot, and Hermione and Neville followed after me. I kept a wary eye out for Draco Malfoy, but the little weasel was lost somewhere in the crowd.

"Everyone in?" Hagrid yelled. "Right then – Forward!"

And with that, the small fleet scraped loose in one smooth motion, cruising off into the darkness. The only light was Hagrid's lantern and the blazing stars reflecting off the glassy-smooth lake. It was unnervingly silent. No-one spoke, as all the students gazed nervously at the imposing castle that slowly loomed over us. The little boats moved closer and closer to the cliff that formed the base of the mountain the castle stood on.

I was jerked from my worries by Hagrid's voice booming "Heads down!" as the first of the boats reached the overhang of ivy and slid into the wide, low tunnel that lay hidden behind them. I'm not sure why we all ducked- Hagrid was the only one tall enough to be even mildly inconvenienced by the lip of the cave.

The boats glided onwards through still more darkness... I'm not sure why they scheduled things so that we spent most of our time in pitch blackness. I wonder how many first-year students needed a change of shorts after this particular magical mystery tour?

Eventually (around the time I started remembering Undertown and uneasily noticing similarities between there and here), the tiny flotilla hit a stony beach that formed a natural underground harbour. I scrambled out of the boat, followed rapidly by the other three (I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one who was glad of at least some light), nearly taking a header into the drink. The only thing that salved my pride was that both Hermione and Neville nearly did as well.

"Oy, you there! Is this your toad?" Hagrid called. He didn't seem to have much in the way of an indoor voice. Probably not all that surprising, I guess.

"Trevor!" Neville yelled happily, scrabbling over the rocks towards the reptile... er, sorry, amphibian... that Hagrid was holding up.

The thing was looking at him, too. Although if it had that much affection for him, I have no idea why it kept getting away. Maybe it just had an even worse direction sense than the kid did.

Hagrid's lantern bobbed away in the darkness, and the rag-tag batch of kids clambered up the passageway after it. After still _more_ time stumbling through the dark on a steep pathway... were we having fun yet?.. we emerged under the starry sky once more, looking out over an expanse of soggy lawn at the castle. It still looked pretty damn impressive, even up close... maybe even more than before, actually, now that it was blotting out half the sky.

The group shuffled across the lawn and clustered in the torchlight that cast long, flickering shadows over the lawns, coming to a halt in front of the enormous, iron-clad oak doors. If they were trying to impress upon the new kids that magic was serious business, they were doing a bang-up job of it. And if they were trying to scare the crap out of them, well, they were doing a pretty good job of that, too.

Hagrid paused in front of the doors. "Everyone here? You there, still got yer toad?"

Then he raised on ham-sized fist and bashed on the door three times.


	3. Chapter 3

The huge doors swung open so abruptly that I was vaguely surprised that Hagrid didn't accidentally punch the person opening it in the face. A tall, spare woman with a stern expression and startlingly green robes stood outlined by the torchlight of the entrance hall.

_Huh. She actually __**does**__ look a lot like Dame Maggie Smith..._ was my first, mostly irrelevant thought. _Then again, the movies seem to have gotten a lot of the visuals right... or something. If this is some kind of bizarre oxygen-deprived hallucination, I wonder exactly how brain-damaged I'd have to be for __**this**__ to be what pops out?_

"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall," Hagrid announced.

"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here."

The emerald robes swished briefly as she whirled and led the gaggle of kids- many of whom were gawking openly- across the huge entry hall. _Glad magic works differently here than it does back home. _ I thought. _Real magic would have a bitch of a time heating a room this size in winter..._

I frowned slightly in confusion as we were led to a smallish side room on the opposite side of the hall from where the noise of the rest of the school was coming from. The Sorting Hat was nowhere to be seen. I cursed silently. It was going to take some work to keep the movies and the books separate in my head, and it seemed that when there was divergence, we were going by the... books? Probably?

I jerked out of my thoughts when the Professor started speaking, then relaxed when I realized she was going into a long spiel about the houses and the house cup and things. I paid just enough attention to make sure that Hufflepuff wasn't secretly evil or something, but didn't worry about it too much otherwise. This stuff, I was pretty sure I remembered.

"I shall return when we are ready for you. Please wait quietly." she finished, and left with the same Queen Victoria sweep that she had led us in with.

I swallowed, and glanced at Ron, hoping that he might be able to divert me from my gloomy thoughts about the Sorting Hat exploding my head or something, but if anything, he looked even more nervous than I did.

I hesitated for a moment, then said "So... Ron... do you know anything about this sorting business?"

Ron actually jumped slightly, poor kid. I think my nervousness might have been rubbing off on him. "Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot, but I think he was joking."

I just nodded. "I don't think they'd be allowed to do things to hurt us..." I said.

Ron shrugged, but stayed silent. Nobody much was talking, except Hermione, who seemed to be reciting lists of spells under her breath and trying to figure out which ones she would need for the supposed 'test'. I noticed a few of the other kids giving her dirty looks, but didn't worry about it too much. I didn't think it would come to anything, and if worst came to worst, Hermione could pretty much take care of herself. At least long enough for help to arrive, anyhow.

Then the screams started.

I was out of my seat and halfway turned around, instinctively going into my usual casting stance, before I even realized what I was doing. Some small part of my brain was noting with approval that the robes made a decent substitute for my duster, swirling in a suitably dramatic fashion, while the rest of it was registering the parade of ghosts streaming in through the back wall.

Ah, wizardry. Even when you're not putting on a show... you're putting on a show.

The ghosts weren't paying much attention to us, since they were busy arguing about someone called 'Peeves'. I frowned. _Peeves... Peeves... oh, right, the poltergeist. He got left out of the movies, didn't he?_

_... really wishing now I was the sort of obsessive nerd who argued for hours over minute plot details and differences between the books and the movies. It would make this so much easier. But no, I had to be the sort of obsessive nerd who argues for hours with Bob the Skull on how the magic in the series works and how it differs from real magic, instead._ I chuckled silently, amused by the memory. Bob- the spirit of knowledge that doubled as my reference library and lab assistant- had gotten so worked up by the end of it that he actually forgot to mock me for how pathetically nerdy it all was.

The Fat Friar said something I wasn't really listening to, although I nodded to him and Nearly Headless Nick courteously- at least, I was pretty sure that the ghost in Elizabethan ruffles was Nick, anyhow- and then Professor McGonagall shooed them out.

"Now, form a line and follow me." the Professor announced.

I got into line, trying to alternately swallow or ignore the lump in my throat. I was... _pretty_ sure... that the Sorting Hat was harmless, but I'd seen too much brain-tinkering magic go wrong in too many horrible ways to be very comfortable with the idea. I ended up behind some darkish-blond-haired kid I didn't recognize from either the books or the movies, and Ron got behind me.

The string of first-years marched across the enormous entry hallway once more, this time to the double doors that the rest of the kid-noises were coming from. Professor McGonagall swung the doors open, and we straggled in. I gave the scenery an admiring glance. The flying candles, the golden dishes and cutlery and things, the star-speckled ceiling... "It's bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in _Hogwarts, A History_." I heard Hermione whisper to someone... all spoke to a practicioner with a firm grasp of the dramatic.

In my experience, that was a good thing. Seriously.

Admittedly, mostly because it made it really, really easy to tell when said practicioner had gone off the deep end, since they were unable to resist, on some fundamental level, the need to wear all black and festoon things with skulls and blood and pentagrams. And occasionally pumpkins.

We came to a stop in front of everyone, and I tried to ignore the hundreds of eyes boring into me. Well, us. I don't think they knew who I was yet... or at least whose body I was wearing... so the stares were probably more generalized than my paranoia was telling me. Then again, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon waiting to eat your face.

I was dragged out of my increasingly-depressing thoughts by the hat starting to sing. I raised an eyebrow. Apparently my paranoia was malfunctioning. It was supposed to make me _more_ aware of things, not less, and I'd totally missed it when the hat was set out.

The hat gave a little ditty about its function, and everyone applauded when it was done. I did too; it was one thing to make a mindripping artifact that could rummage through your brain like last week's laundry. It was an entirely different thing to give said mindripper a sense of rhythym and meter, and the ability to formulate a rhyme scheme. The hat bowed to each of the four tables in turn, then went quiescent again.

"So we've just got to try on a hat!" Ron whispered. "I'll kill Fred, he was going on about wrestling a troll."

I managed a brief smile at him. Inwardly, though, I was cursing myself for having decided to watch _Scanners_ again last week. Stupid cheap rerun theatre.

Kids were starting to be called up now, and I tried to concentrate. But they were mostly just being called up in alphabetical order, and I didn't recognize most of them. At least, I didn't think so. I'm pretty sure I would've remembered the name 'Finch-Fletchley'. Granted, none of **their** heads exploded, but then again, it wasn't them I was worried about.

Kids sat under the hat for varying lengths of time, and Hermione ended up in Gryffindor, much to my lack of surprise. Ron groaned beside me, and I suppressed a smirk, wondering if I should tell him about a certain wedding a decade and a bit from now. The urge to smirk vanished when Malfoy got sent to Slytherin, looking smug.

The crowd of kids was thinning, and I actually jumped when "Potter, Harry." was called.

I'd expected the whispers. I hadn't expected it to be quite **that** dark in the hat. I swallowed hard and waited.

When you've seen the things I have, it's one of the most unnerving things in the world to have a quiet voice speak so close to your ear that you _should_ feel the warmth and moisture of the speaker's breath... and you _don't_. The list of things that can do that is actually pretty long, but there isn't much on it that you'd want that close to your head.

_"Uh."_ the hat said, and then we were in a circular patch of light in the middle of an ocean of shadow.

The hat was still a hat, although it wasn't on my head anymore, and I was still a kid, but there was another me there. One that looked like I normally did, tall and rawboned with slightly too-sharp features, but this me was dressed in black and had a neatly-trimmed goatee.

_"Welcome back to the Mirror Universe."_ I muttered under my breath.

My subconscious ignored my muttering and told me _"Sorry, Harry. But I figured you could use a hand with this one."_

_"... this is new."_ the Hat observed. _"I'd thought I'd seen just about everything over the years, but..."_

_"You're telling me."_ my subconscious responded.

I cut him off before he could get going. _"I'm a bit of a special case."_ I said, then paused, wincing, as my subconscious choked off a bark of laughter. I tried to regain momentum. _"I'm not in here voluntarily, trust me on this one. There was some kind of accident, but that's about all I know." _ I paused again as a thought hit me. _"Hey, can you tell if that kid's still in here? I'd hate to think I was pulling a Harlan Ellison on him."_

The hat gave off the general impression that it would have liked to blink. _"A what?"_

_"Never mind, sci fi author. Wrote a story called I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, if you're wondering what I was thinking of."_

_"Uh... right. Anyway, I'm... not sure."_ the hat said slowly. _"There's definitely more than just you in there, but how much of that is your friend here,"_ it bobbed its tip at my subconscious, _"And how much is anything else, I can't be sure. Sorry. It's hard for me to get much out of adult's heads- they're more complex, and I don't get put on a lot of them. I make them nervous for some reason."_

I managed a tight smile.

_"Well, from what I can see in this mess you call a brain, I'm going to put you in Gryffindor. And I'm going to have a word with the Headmaster about this."_ the hat said. It twitched slightly, then rotated in place to 'look' at my subconscious.

_"Sorry."_ he said, and gestured at me.

_"Right, thanks. Could you please let Headmaster Dumbledore know that I'd really like to talk to him about this mess?"_

The hat rocked slightly, approximating a nod. _"I'm not sure I can say you're not just crazy, though."_ it added as an afterthought.

_"That makes two of us."_ I grumbled as I felt myself snap back to what was currently passing for reality.

The hat shouted "Gryffindor!" to a chorus of cheers, and I almost fell off the stool. I staggered over to the cheering Gryffindor table, limply shaking Percy's hand when he grabbed mine and ignoring the Weasley twins as they chanted something about 'getting' Potter. Er, me. I flopped into a place opposite the ruffled ghost and just kind of sagged.

The ghost patted my arm, and the whole thing went slightly numb. I twitched slightly and gave him a tired look, but he was already watching the sorting again. I shrugged, trying to work the tingling out, and got my first clear look at the head table. Hagrid was on the end closest to me, and when he caught my eye, flashed me a quick thumbs-up. I grinned at him in response, surprising myself a bit. Hagrid had never really been my favourite character, but the half-giant's good cheer was just infectuous. I could see why original Harry had liked him.

Dumbledore, of course, was front and center. I frowned at him, thinking. He was _good_ at playing the long game, I had to give him that, but his manipulations of pretty much everything and everybody throughout the series had always kind of bothered me.

... yeah, yeah, I know. Pot, kettle, etcetera. I'm working on that, okay?

My gaze wandered a bit further, and there was Quirrell. The purple turban looked as stupid as always, but I was vaguely surprised by how _young_ he looked. Couldn't have been much more than twenty something... stars and stones, he was probably younger than Billy and the Werewolves! And given that somewhere in my brain, Billy and crew were filed under 'kid sidekicks'... reality notwithstanding... I abruptly felt very old.

Which was seriously surreal, given that I was currently less than five feet tall and had a voice that hadn't even cracked yet.

I nodded to the black kid who joined the Gryffindor table... Dean something, I think?.. and waved to Ron as encouragingly as I could manage as he went under the hat. Greenly.

British schools are weird.

I gave him an 'I-told-you-so' type grin when he came out as a Gryffindor a second later and joined in on the applause.

"Well done, Ron, excellent." Percy told his brother in a pompous voice.

I gave him a strange look. I didn't know a lot of teenagers who were quite that eager to become... whatever it was that he was trying to be. Sounded like he was trying to make sure that the stick up his ass was firmly in place and that everyone knew it. I shook my head and forgot about it. Couldn't do much about it now.

At that point, Dumbledore beamed around the hall and started speaking. He reminded me enough of the Merlin of the White Council that it was really unnerving to see him looking that happy. Arthur Langtry, my putative boss, fell under much the same 'wise, ancient wizard' category as the headmaster of Hogwarts, but I'm not sure I've ever seen him smile. Of course, that might partially be because of the fact that if I can see him, he can see me. But that's another story.

"Welcome!" he boomed. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!"

And then he sat back down, looking fairly pleased with himself. I smiled and shook my head as most of the rest of the students clapped and cheered.

"Potatoes?" came Percy's voice from beside me. I jumped, and glanced at the table. Not a bad trick- all the plates that had been empty a moment ago were now piled high with food. I nodded to Percy and started helping myself. I'd forgotten how hungry kids always seemed to be, and my stomach was now forcibly reminding me.

"That does look good." the ruffed ghost commented a bit wistfully.

I looked at him sideways, still chewing. I swallowed hard, but before I could say anything, he carried on.

"I haven't eaten for nearly four hundred years. I don't need to, of course, but one does miss it." He paused, then changed the subject. "I don't think I've introduced myself? Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington at your service. Resident ghost of the Gryffindor tower."

"I know who you are!" Ron blurted. "My brothers told me about you- you're Nearly Headless Nick!"

The ghost looked offended and started "I would _prefer_ you to call me Sir Nicholas de Mimsy...", but he was interrupted by the blondish kid who had been in line in front of me when we came into the hall.

"_Nearly_ Headless? How can you be _nearly_ Headless?"

"Like this." the ghost responded, flipping his head off to hang on one shoulder by a bit of skin. I winced, then realized that the conversation was rapidly becoming small talk. I tuned it out, worrying again as to how things were going to go, exactly. In the books, Hogwarts remained largely inviolate... aside from all the near-deaths, of course... until much later in the series. If I pulled off even half the stuff I was planning on trying, things were going to get very weird. I had no idea what Voldemort was going to do in response to me

Then I did something stupid. I glanced at the high table again, meeting the eyes of a hook-nosed man with lank, greasy black hair who was haranguing Quirrell. Once the feeling of a hot poker being jammed through my skull went away, I shook my head to clear it and growled irritably to myself. I should've known better than to look at the back of Quirrell's head. And I _definitely_ should have known better than to let myself catch Snape's attention.

Not long after that, the food started vanishing, and I had a brief, irrational urge to slip a tip onto my plate for the house elves.

Dumbledore stood up to speak again, making some announcements. I smirked slightly to myself at the thought that at least assemblies at magical schools were slightly more entertaining than the mundane variety. After some announcements regarding sports, out-of-bounds areas and painful deaths, he announced the school song. As a 'pick your own tune' thing.

I blinked as he summoned the words and thought fast, wishing I had my guitar with me. Then the music started up, different tunes for everyone. Of course, that changed a bit when I started. A familiar, driving beat and grinding bassline slashed across the other tunes, nearly drowning them all out wholesale as I started singing the Hogwarts school song to the tune of _Enter Sandman_, by Metallica.

Murphy would probably mock me for picking something so cliche, and Molly would laugh at me for going so old-school, but come on. I was under pressure, and it was the first thing I could think of.

After a couple of minutes, students started trailing off. I finished singing, the thunderous bassline fading out, and settled back, grinning, as many of the students stared around the hall, wondering where on Earth THAT had come from. The Weasley twins were the last to finish up, singing along to what had to be some kind of dirge, and one of the slowest I had ever heard. Even they were a bit wide-eyed, although I suspected in their case it was more envy.

Dumbledore actually conducted the last bits of their tune with his wand, then wiped his eyes. "Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot!" he said, apparently perfectly sincere.

I must have had a strange look on my face as I tried to figure out what working with him was going to be like. Assuming I managed to convince him, of course.

Percy harangued all the first years into a group and led them off through the castle. At least twice we passed through hidden doorways, and I wondered exactly how many students graduated a few years late because they spent however many months lost in the depths of this overgrown rat maze. My brain was happily conjuring up images of wandering tribes of feral students lost in the bowels of Hogwarts... apparently it had been a while since this body had slept, and I had been running on pretty short sleep before the transfer, too... when I ran into Ron because the line had abruptly stopped.

I muttered "Sorry." and craned around to see why everyone had slammed to a halt. There was a bundle of walking sticks floating in the middle of the hallway, which started launching themselves at Percy. I blinked.

"Peeves. A poltergeist." Percy whispered as he ducked, then, louder, "Peeves- show yourself!"

An apparently sourceless raspberry was his only reply.

"Do you want me to go to the Bloody Baron?"

Peeves appeared with a popping noise. He was floating in midair, crosslegged, with the bundle of walking sticks clutched in his lap. He looked oddly like someone had managed to crossbreed a ferret and a frog, with the latter's broad mouth, and the former's dark, wicked eyes.

"Oooooooh!" he chortled, "Ickle Firsties! What fun!"

He swooped at the group, who ducked as one.

"Go away, Peeves, or the Baron'll hear about this, I mean it!" Percy barked.

Peeves blew another raspberry at Percy, then popped out of sight again, dropping the bundle of sticks on Neville's head as he went. Suits of armour rattled down the hallway as he hurtled away.

"You want to watch out for Peeves, the Bloody Baron's the only one who can control him, he won't even listen to us prefects. Here we are." Percy said, gesturing to a large portrait of a woman in pink. A _lot_ of woman in pink. If she sang, you knew it was over.

Instead of singing, though, she just said "Password?"

"Caput draconis." Percy replied, and the portrait swung aside. There was a round hole in the wall, too high for anyone as short as I was now to get into comfortably. Most of us managed to scramble through- Neville actually needed a boost- and then we were in some sort of sitting room deal with big, comfy-looking armchairs and a roaring fireplace.

Percy shooed the girls through one doorway and the boys through another, and I was a bit surprised to realize that there were only four first-year boys. Well, five if you counted me. Which was still weird. We all tromped up the spiral stairs, dragged our PJs out of our trunks, and got changed to flop into bed. I was too tired to even boggle at the fact that dorm rooms for eleven-year-olds had huge, ornate four-poster beds with velvet hangings.

"Great food, isn't it?" I heard Ron mutter from his bed. I mumbled something incomprehensible, and Ron snapped "Get _off_, Scabbers! He's chewing my sheets."

I frowned. Scabbers was something else on my list. But I was... too tired... at this... stage... to... my eyelids crawled shut, and I don't remember anything else from that night.

At least until a voice out of thin air said "Harry.", very firmly from right next to my ear.


	4. Chapter 4

Once I had picked myself up off the floor, I found that I still couldn't see anything. This would largely be because I'd managed to get both the bedclothes and the curtains wrapped around my head. I fought my way loose, a bit bemused to notice that my wand was in my hand. Apparently some portion of my reflexes had subbed in the wand for the big old .45 I favoured normally. I still didn't see anyone there, and was slightly worried to realize that I hadn't made the slightest sound with all the crashing around I'd been doing. I'm pretty sure I'd tried to yelp in surprise, too, when I was first woken.

I frowned and gathered my will, readying myself for whatever might be happening. I had no idea if gathering my will would accomplish anything at all in this body, but I had to do _something_, and the best I could hope to do with the wand at this point was poke someone in the eye. Assuming they were short enough for me to reach their eyes.

Speaking of eyes... I dug around in the tangled mess of fabric on the floor, coming up with the two empty halves of what had used to be a pair of glasses. I stared at them blankly.

Apparently some things never change.

The same insistent voice spoke again. "Harry."

There was a pause as I squinted into the darkness. I don't think I'd ever get used to needing glasses.

"_Reparo_." the voice continued, and the glasses-halves snapped back together, perfectly whole again, the lenses reassembling themselves from the shards in the blankets.

The glasses then yanked themselves out of my hands and planted themselves firmly onto my face. I almost tipped over when they did- the initial adrenaline surge was already gone, and my body was rapidly falling back asleep, no matter what my brain might think about the situation.

There was a very faint sigh from the air somewhere on the other side of my bed, and the various bits of fabric disentangled themselves from me and resumed their positions on the bed, aside from one coverlet, which slid underneath me and carried me into the air.

It would have been a surreal journey to travel through the eerie dark of the midnight castle, floating on a makeshift flying carpet and attended by an unseen presence. Of course, I say 'would have' because I fell asleep before we'd even reached the living room-ish bit of the Gryffindor tower.

I half-woke in a room full of snoozing portraits and way too much gold inlay. Once my eyes adjusted enough to get an impression beyond 'shiny', I realized that a lot of the reflection was from... widgets. Not sure how else to describe them. Delicate silver whirring things with no apparent function on tables all over the place.

I had to admit, it made the place look pretty wizard-ish. At least, I'm pretty sure it did. My eyelids were drooping again. Then Dumbledore was in front of me, shoving something into my hand.

"Invigoration Draught. Take a drink- carefully- as it appears that we need to talk fairly urgently." was all he said.

"No Coke, huh." I said with (mostly) mock-disappointment.

I drank the potion, moving cautiously in that weird, dreamlike state you get when you're fairly seriously sleep-deprived. And then the fog lifted. I actually felt like I could almost function again. I hesitated, then looked up and met Dumbledore's eyes, not entirely sure what was going to happen.

Because, well... you know the old cliche about the eyes being the window of the soul? Yeah. For wizards- at least my variety of wizard- that's quite literally true. When someone meets our eyes, we get a good look at their innermost self- their soul. It's not always terribly informative, but it does usually give us a pretty good sense of who they are. And they, in return, get to see ours. At least, once again, in my world.

Contact.

The headmaster's brilliantly blue eyes widened slightly in shock, and then, at least from my point of view, kept widening, expanding to envelope me as the soulgaze took hold. I looked around with interest, not really knowing what to expect.

I found myself on a dark, grassy plain, gently rolling into the distance. Standing stones jutted out of it in places, although there didn't seem to be any pattern I could see. A distant sound caught my attention, and I looked up.

And up.

And UP.

Above the plain was a vast celestial orrery made of stardust and moonlight, all delicate silver-blue tracery that glowed softly against the night sky. I gaped at it for a moment, wondering what I was standing on if the solar system was a giant mechanical model of itself. Then I got ahold of myself and took a better look at my surroundings. Shifting my perspective slightly, I found myself 'standing' in the midst of the misty glow of the Pluto analogue... apparently nobody had told Dumbledore that Pluto wasn't really a planet anymore. Or maybe it still was. I'm not sure when they decided that, and I'm pretty sure that where I currently was was sometime in the past.

From my new vantage point, I looked out towards the horizon. The rolling plains were vast, extending as far as I could see. And surrounding the orrery on all sides, engulfing the plains, was an enormous bulwark of stormclouds.

Pluto-me rose slightly on its erratic orbit, spinning around a sun that I still couldn't see clearly, and even as I watched, a flash of poisonously brilliant green lightning stabbed out of the storm, arcing unnaturally across the sky to shatter against the light surrounding the celestial mechanism.

I flinched back, falling 'out' of not-Pluto, and caught myself to go bounding inwards. As I leapt from one glowing planet-outline to another, I thought back to what I knew about Dumbledore, trying to figure out what was going on.

As I left the outer system and leapt towards Jupiter, I was struck by an odd sense of familiarity. As I slipped into the ethereal planet model, I could've sworn I'd heard Hagrid. A whiff of tobacco and cured hams, the faint echo of a booming laugh, the feeling that there was something enormous and dangerous... and probably being kept as an inappropriate pet... close by... I looked around, but there wasn't any kind of a representation of the half-giant anywhere nearby.

I frowned. I hadn't gotten any familiar tells from any of the other planets, but that didn't necessarily mean anything- the Hagrid-hints here were so vague that I probably wouldn't even have noticed them if I hadn't been close to Hagrid not long ago.

Thunder muttered in the distance, and I jerked my head towards the storm, peering through the silvery mist to catch a brief glimpse of virulent green in the dark clouds. Then it clicked, and I swallowed hard, shuddering. I was once again glad that the soulgaze could only happen once; if for whatever reason things happened the same way as the books even though I was here... and it would be just my luck if they _did_... then soulgazing Dumbledore in a few years would be a window into Hell.

I shuddered again as I moved on, ever deeper towards the sun, my imagination treating me to a vision of this titanic, beautiful construct shattered and broken, the darkness pressing in as the green lightning stabbed out again and again, smashing through the wall of light to claim ever more of these satellites, until a bolt claimed the sun itself... the sun that wasn't Dumbledore.

After doubletaking so hard that I nearly fell off Mercury, I **did** fall off when Dumbeldore's voice spoke. Once again, right in my ear.

"Not now." was all he said, although, as I quite literally fell out of the soulgaze, I could've sworn I heard him whisper "Goodnight, Ariana..."

I snapped back to reality, or something vaguely resembling it, in front of Dumbledore. I must have been giving him a very strange look, because his speculative one turned amused around the edges.

After a moment, he spoke. "I am not sure what you did, Harry... I may call you Harry, may I not?"

He paused, and I sighed. "Yes, I'm really a wizard named Harry."

The old wizard's mouth crinkled around the edges, before his eyes went wistful. "Indeed. I am not sure what you did, Harry, or how you did it, but it was a precious, if all-too-brief, gift. However, the Sorting Hat tells me that we may have some minor difficulties."

Minor difficulties. Right. Gotta love that British fondness for understatement.

"That might be stretching the definition of 'minor' a little, sir." I started, then paused, almost going crosseyed as I tried to stare at myself in shock. Not sure where the 'sir' came from, and if it meant that I was automatically offering Dumbledore the same respect as my old mentor, Ebenezar McCoy... I'm not sure what that meant in terms of where my head was at.

"You could very well be right, Harry." Dumbledore said, diplomatically ignoring my lapse and hesitating only slightly over calling me Harry.

"However, we had best press on."

"Indeed." I responded, raising an eyebrow at him. "Anyways, our least-minor 'minor difficulty' is the fact that while I am, in fact, a wizard named Harry, I'm not the Harry you think I am."

Dumbledore opened his mouth, but I continued rapidly. "Please wait a moment, sir. I've thought long and hard as to how to convince you, and the best I could come up with was eight words."

He simply nodded, and I took a deep breath, and blurted "Tom Marvolo Riddle has eight horcruxes."

That had to have had an effect, but I'll give the old man this much- he had a poker face that would do any card shark proud.

"That was only six words." he pointed out.

"Uh..." I said suavely. "Would adding 'not seven' to the end help? Cut me some slack, I'm under pressure here."

Dumbledore shook his finger at me severely. "That simply won't do. Being able to perform mathematics properly while under duress is a vital skill."

It was my turn to quirk a smile. "I know of another Harry that would probably agree with you. The difference between counting to five and counting to six can be pretty important unless you're the luckiest punk alive."

That actually managed to prompt a slight, bemused frown from the headmaster, but it cleared quickly.

"I will give you this much. You have my attention." he said.

I nodded sharply. "Well, first and most important, Voldemort... or some weird ghost-bit of him... is here, stuck to Quirrell's head under that stupid turban. He's here looking for the Sorceror's Stone... er, Philosopher's Stone?.. that you've got hidden in the third-floor hallway behind Fluffy- Hagrid's three-headed dog thing- a logic puzzle with potions, a giant game of wizard chess, and maybe some other crap."

That was finally enough to crack Dumbledore's composure. He blinked, twice, very quickly, and frowned like a thundercloud.

"Perhaps you had best start at the beginning." he said warningly. He didn't actually lean forward ominously, but I got the impression that he would have liked to.

"Well, let's see... if I remember my Genesis correctly, it goes 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth..." I started, then broke off at his glower.

What can I say? I'm an incorrigible smartass. I've even got business cards!

"If you meant the beginning of this current situation, well... my name is Harry Dresden. I'm a wizard of the White Council and a private investigator out of Chicago in my world. Where, I might add, you are a fictional character, and the boy whose body I've gotten stuffed into is the star of a series of popular childrens' books bearing his name."

"And yes, I've read the series." I said, ignoring Dumbledore's look of blank surprise. "That's how I know about Fluffy and all that stuff, and fun little trivia like the fact that you're going to die of... Hell's bells, something or other, to do with the horcruxes I think... in five-ish years, that Snape is your double-agent because he still has it bad for Lily Potter and that he's going to hate Harry Potter... well, me, I guess... because I represent him never getting her, or that the teaching position for Defense Against the Dark Arts actually is cursed because of old Moldy, or... well, let's just say that it's going to be an entertaining ride."

Dumbledore continued to stare at me for a while, then wordlessly handed me a quill and a piece of parchment.

To this day I don't remember much about that night- just a lot of writing down of absolutely everything I remembered from the series, and then dreamless sleep.

*****

I woke up the next day feeling the strangest combination of smug and terrified I've ever experienced. Dumbledore working blind, with nothing but vague-to-the-point-of-uselessness prophecies and his own guesswork to go from, had cut Voldemort off at the knees. From beyond the grave, even.

Dumbledore with as close to a working copy of the script as I could give him? Voldemort was going to be living in interesting times very soon.

Of course, that didn't mean that I was going to just sit back and watch the show. As good as Dumbledore was, backup never hurt. And besides all that, if I was somehow fated to be the one to bring Voldemort down, I was going to do my damnedest to make sure it was as unfair a fight as possible. Up to and including arranging for an anvil to be suspended above a big painted 'X' on the pavement, if possible. Although I might skip the birdseed part of that one- it was possible to overdo the Wile E. Coyote, suuuuuper genius thing, after all.

I'd also made sure to keep a copy of the list myself, although it was hidden as carefully as I could manage. But, for the moment, I had bigger problems. Joy of joys, it was time to relive junior high.

Turns out that reliving junior high as a celebrity was even _less_ fun than I expected. The stares and whispering got on my nerves amazingly quickly, but worse than that... WAY worse than that... was the building. I've found my way through Undertown, the lethal supernatural labyrinth beneath Chicago, the ancient tunnels of the White Council in Glasgow, and the faerie Ways of the Nevernever, and _never_ has simply finding my way from place to place caused as much cursing, stress, and near-aneurysms as Hogwarts.

With moving staircases and false doors and hidden doors and landmarks that wander around on their own and hallways that lead someplace else depending on the phase of the moon... Ron was staring at me with something approaching awe as I hissed imprecations at the door we were stuck in front of- one of the older kids had told me that it would only open if asked politely; in my current mood, I was seeing if threats of copious amounts of fire mixed with swearing in three languages would do- when Professor Flitwick popped it open from the other side. With a polite 'Thank you.' to the door, he yanked us through with surprising strength for so small and elderly a man.

"Come, come, come!" he said excitedly in his oddly high-pitched voice. "We mustn't be late for our first class, now. Wouldn't do to be setting a poor example for the others, eh, Harry?" he said, twinkling his eyes at me over his glasses.

I sighed and nodded. I actually was interested... very interested... in getting down to things, studying the magic of this world firsthand, but there always seemed to be a ticking clock in the back of my mind, counting down to war.

Of course, I reminded myself, it was a war that I was going to be worse than useless in if I couldn't perform any magic. I sighed and followed the little professor, mentally preparing myself for some hard study.

Then again, thinking about it, it couldn't be any worse than constructing a perfect scale replica of Chicago, thaumaturgically connected to the entire city, and with miniaturized ley-lines running through it to use as a spell focus, like the model I had made in my basement. It certainly couldn't be any more tedious.

That night, as I got ready to collapse into bed, I paused after I blew out my candle. I took the candle into the curtain-enclosed area with me as I crawled into the big four-poster, and stared at it for a moment. I took a long, nervous breath and steadied myself.

Gathering my will, I focused it and whispered "_Flickum Bicus_."

I held my breath as the world surged faintly, ignoring the rushing in my ears, staring at the wick so hard that anyone would think I was testing to see if I had heat vision.

Sleep came a little more easily that night, my faint smile bathed in a gentle orange glow from the tiny flame at the tip of the candle.


	5. Chapter 5

The next few days went by very, very quickly. I hoped I'd be able to get back to gloat at Bob about our 'uselessly nerdy arguments' turning out to be useful after all. Understanding at least a little bit about the magical theory behind things gave me a jump on just about everyone in Gryffindor, except maybe Hermione. It wouldn't last, of course- we were already hitting bits that diverged from the theories Bob and I had managed to come up with, and if the fundamentals were different, then everything else would be too.

Defense Against the Dark Arts (which my brain insisted on abbreviating as DALI, for whatever ridiculous reason), much to the collective disappointment of the first years, had been put on hiatus. Apparently Professor Quirrell's health had taken an 'unexpected downturn'. Pity. I'd been thinking of running up to him and giving him an enthusiastic hug if Dumbledore didn't get rid of him soon enough.

I was finding it easier than I'd thought it would be to be a kid again. Easy enough that I was really starting to wonder if I'd been repressing the need for a second childhood or something. Admittedly, it was probably a _lot_ easier than it was going to be in a year or two when the hormones started kicking in. Ron and I wound up spending hours scrambling around the castle together- we even pestered his twin brothers into showing us some of the secret passages. Of course, that wasn't always easy- schoolwork was always demanding a good chunk of our time, from the first day onwards.

Most of my time that wasn't taken up by schoolwork or rambling was taken up by plotting. There's really no other word for it. By the third day, my original list was covered in scrawled annotations and random additions. One thing, though, that I made _sure_ to prepare for, was Friday.

"Double potions with Slytherin today." I told Ron at breakfast. "This is going to be all kinds of fun."

Ron gave me a strange look, then shrugged. "Snape's their head of house, you know. They say he always favours them. Guess we'll find out if that's true or not."

Any further witty banter was interrupted by Hedwig's arrival. The snowy owl had been regarding me with a certain amount of suspicion ever since we got to Hogwarts, but most mornings she deigned to let me stroke her soft feathers and eat a nibble or two of toast out of my hand. This morning, though, she had a letter.

I scanned it quickly, and said "Huh. It's from Hagrid.", passing it over for Ron to read as well.

When he passed it back, I snagged his pen... er, quill... and scrawled 'Yes, please!' in reply to the invitation that was in the letter.

Potions class was, quite naturally, down in the dungeon. I'd talked to at least a few people who'd thought that Rowling had just put them there so that Snape would seem more evil, but I'd _done_ some work with potions, and believe me, when things go wrong- and something inevitably will, even when you're not dealing with student potioners- the last thing you want is for your runaway cat-dissolving brew (or whatever) to be able to flow downstairs (or just eat straight through the floor) into the rest of the house. Or castle, as the case may be.

I managed to restrain my brief, approving nod. The potions dungeon was lined with bubbling glassware, pickled magical whatzits on shelves, and jars and containers of liquids of every colour imaginable, including a few that were glowing internally. It was also just noticeably colder there than in the rest of the castle. All in all, a surprisingly effective setup for bringing an ominous mood into play.

Snape himself was lurking at his desk in a dark corner of the classroom, and unfolded like some prehistoric leather-winged horror as we came in. Or... and here I had to hastily swallow a fit of giggling... like Val Kilmer when he was trying **way** too hard playing the title role in _Batman Forever_. Luckily for me, the fact that I had been wanting to giggle was distracting and, frankly, disturbing enough to keep me looking what Snape appeared to consider suitably cowed.

The crowd of eleven-year-olds took their places at the counters that mostly filled the room, and Snape picked up a piece of paper from his desk, still glowering around at the room like a dowager matron trying to figure out which of her charity cases had just broken wind in her living room. He started to take the roll, and paused when he hit the name that I was still trying to get used to responding to.

"Ah, yes," he murmured, "Harry Potter. Our new... _celebrity_."

I ignored the sniggering from some of the Slytherins- I was pretty sure that little blonde weasel and his goons were at the head of it anyway- and stared directly into the bridge of Snape's nose.

That was actually a surprisingly useful trick for a wizard- we couldn't meet peoples' eyes normally unless we wanted to be running around soulgazing everyone, and avoiding ever looking at peoples' faces didn't work all that well. So a lot of us just stared at the bridge of their noses. It had the often-useful side-effect of kind of unnerving people, since as far as they could tell, we were talking to them normally, but something they couldn't put their finger on was wrong.

Snape, though, just looked back down at his list and continued going through the names.

Then he set it down, and swept his cold, empty eyes over the class. I swallowed slightly and hoped that I would never have to soulgaze Snape. I'd seen eyes like that too many times before, and what was behind them was never pretty. And I seriously doubted that someone like him would appreciate being shown their own hidden depths.

Assuming that was how soulgazing worked here. Dumbledore certainly didn't seem to have gotten a look at my soul, but then again, dear old Dumbles seemed to be the exception to a lot of rules, whether they came from in-universe or out.

Snape had started to speak. I was actually a little jealous- on the occasions when I'd had to teach a class, I'd had to blow out the front wall (mostly) accidentally to get their attention. Snape, on the other hand, barely had to whisper.

"As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death-"

At that point, it took most of my self control not to stick my hand up and blurt out something about 'aren't those just poisons?', but thankfully I managed it. Snape wasn't doing much to disprove the books' portrayal of him as a... well, not to put too fine a point on it, but a complete ass... but if I was right, I was going to need him.

"- if you aren't as big a class of dunderheads as I usually have to teach." he finished.

Ron and I glanced at one another, and I saw Hermione on the edge of her seat out of the corner of my eye, looking desperate to prove herself, as usual. She wasn't going to get the chance, though.

Snape had been pacing back and forth while he gave his little speech, and had stopped with his back to the class when he finished, staring into middle distance. The he whirled so abruptly that I was left wondering if he'd used magic to do it.

"Potter!" he snapped, jabbing a finger in my direction. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

It took some effort not to smile beatifically. I'd been preparing for this moment for the last two days; every spare moment had been spent studying the potions textbook until my eyes crossed.

"A sleeping potion, si... ssssi... professor." I managed, after nearly choking on calling him 'sir'. Dumbledore might rate it, but the lovelorn greasetrap had a ways to go in my eyes. "The text called it something like the drink of the living death, so it's likely pretty strong, too."

Snape's only reaction was a slightly raised eyebrow. Next to me, Ron was staring openly, and Hermione was frowning at me, her hand still half-raised.

"_Draught_ of the living death, Potter." Snape corrected. "Very well, since you are apparently under the impression that you are clever, where would you go to fetch me a bezoar?"

I made a show of hesitating. "I'm not sure..." I started, then paused. Snape started to form a triumphant sneer, but then I continued. "I don't know if there are any goats around here. And I don't think I know how to butcher one anyhow." I frowned, then shrugged. "Maybe you could just magic the bezoar out of their stomach, though. But it's supposed to be a general antitoxin."

I froze slightly at those last words, cursing myself. 'General antitoxin' had been pure Harry Dresden slipping through, and if anyone was watching me closely, they might wonder why Harry Potter would phrase something that way. I was pretty sure most eleven-year-olds wouldn't say that, especially since the textbook said something about it 'saving you from poisons'.

If Snape caught it, he wasn't letting on. Ron, on the other hand, was giving me a very strange look. He'd seen me carting the potions textbook around, and now he knew why I had been doing that before class even started. But he was pretty obviously wondering why I'd **bothered** to do it. Hermione was also giving me an odd look, but I didn't have time to worry about it.

Snape looked like he was going to say something else, but then he glanced around rapidly as if he'd suddenly remembered that there was a class in session, not just a private tutorial session that he'd somehow gotten confused with Torquemada's inquisition.

"Well?" he snapped. "Why aren't you all writing this down?"

There was a hurried rustling of parchment and scratching of quills as the class suddenly jolted into motion. As we all wrote, I was uneasily aware of Snape's eyes on me. I'd expected him to be furious, with maybe juuuuuust enough curiousity planted to draw him in later. Instead, he looked... detached. Contemplative, maybe?

I didn't like it, but I needed to concentrate if I wanted to have a chance of understanding the magic here. And possibly of passing some or any of these classes.

*****

Nightfall found me sitting, along with Ron, in Hagrid's hut. Hagrid's enormous dog, Fang, had taken an immediate liking to Ron, much to my amusement and his dampness. Fang reminded my a bit of a wussy version of Mouse, my own dog. At least size-wise. This, quite naturally, did not dissuade Fang in the least from thinking that he was a lap-dog, and Ron was struggling to breathe underneath an enormous mass of dog. Or maybe around the rock cake he'd just tried to eat. Hagrid appeared to be taking the 'rock' part a little too literally.

I held my own rock cake listlessly in front of me, staring blankly into the darkness beyond Hagrid's cozy, cluttered little cottage. I snapped out of it with a start when I realized- after it had snapped in half with a noise like an actual rock being split- that Hagrid was starting to fidget with his own rock cake.

"Sorry, Hagrid." I said with a sigh. "It's just been one of those weeks, y'know?"

I gave him a guileless look. "What do you know about Snape, Hagrid? He was... weird."

Hagrid returned my guileless look with a fishy stare, and Ron elbowed me.

"That never works." he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. "The harder you try to look innocent, the worse it goes. I should know- my mum can spot it at fifty paces." he finished glumly.

I dropped the attempt at looking innocent and slumped, none of it feigned. I'd never really had much of a chance to be a kid, and apparently there were a lot of nuances that I had no idea how to deal with.

"Well, he was still weird." I muttered without really thinking about it.

Hagrid looked at me for a moment, then shrugged. Given the sheer size of him, it was a fairly impressive motion.

"Professor Snape ha' had a rough go o' things. Some days, seems as if Dumbledore is th'only one ter believe in him." he said carefully, then paused. "Know what that's like." he added after a moment.

An uneasy silence descended over the cottage. I looked at Hagrid, who didn't seem inclined to say much more, then at Ron, who was carefully not looking at either of us, although the tips of his ears were turning slightly pink. As for me, I spaced out for a minute, trying to decide how much of what I knew to reveal.

Often tricky for wizards, since the first inclination is 'as little as possible'.

Thankfully, I was saved from the dilemma by Ron, who mumbled "Dunno why anyone wouldn't trust you, Hagrid...", while sounding suspiciously like he knew perfectly well why someone would mistrust the half-giant.

Hagrid glanced at him, then, a bit unexpectedly, broke into a broad, warm smile. "Nah, nah, don't worry yerself about it. Yeh got nothin' to be ashamed of as far as yer family goes; yeh Weasleys have always been good sorts. Always treated me right, the lot o' yeh."

Ron untensed a little, and gave Hagrid an appreciative grin.

Hagrid, showing more tact than I would've really expected, changed the subject to one of Ron's brothers, and soon the two of them were talking about 'Charlie', and his work with dragons. I sat in silence, turning a rock cake over and over in my hands and thinking. Hagrid was definitely one of the good ones, but he was Dumbledore's man through and through. If things went bad, he'd insist on following Dumbledore's plan. And if things were going bad, it would mean that Dumbledore's plan _wasn't working_.

I'd tell him what I could, but I didn't think I could trust him all the way. Not if my plans might come into conflict with Dumbledore's.

*****

Not long after, we were walking back towards the castle from Hagrid's hut, clutching handfuls of rock-like cakes that we somehow hadn't managed to refuse.

Then I nearly swallowed my tongue when Snape materialized out of the darkness.

While I was trying to shut off the parts of my brain that were wandering off on irrelevant tangents so I could produce something more articulate than 'Gack!', Snape stepped forward and grabbed my arm firmly. I finally managed to drag my brain off wondering if my earlier comparisons to Batman hadn't been more appropriate than I realized and/or insisting that he couldn't have just appeared, you can't apparate on the Hogwarts grounds, but before I could say anything, Snape overrode me.

"I believe it's dinnertime, Weasley. You are overdue for joining your siblings in ramming food down your gaping maw. Potter, with me. Now." he snapped.

Ron looked mutinous, but I shook my head at him very slightly. Now was _not_ the time to be antagonizing Snape. Especially with no witnesses.

After a few minutes of Ron stomping off as slowly as possible while still actually moving, Snape turned to me. Then my eyes communicated to my brain the happy news that he was holding both his own wand and my wand-arm, keeping me from digging mine out. For whatever good it would've done me.

"_Muffliato!_" Snape snapped, bringing his wand around in a snapping motion. I stared at him blankly.

"_Specialis Revelio! Reparifarge!_" he barked at me, jabbing his wand in my direction. I continued to stare at him blankly. My Latin may have gotten better in the last few years, but it wasn't up to deciphering the garbled dog-Latin of the Potterverse spellbooks. Aside from some coloured lights, nothing much happened.

Snape leaned in, getting right in my face. I leaned out, trying to get out of his face. He smelled like bad hair product.

"Who **are** you, boy?" he demanded.

"Harry." I responded shortly.

"You _lie_. You..." Snape said, then paused, straightening up a little and staring at me like I was some new species of particularly nasty-smelling beetle. "You aren't lying."

This time, I felt the brush against my mental defenses, and instinctively clamped them down. Legilimency. Great. Just like all the other members of the White Council, I'd started doing some pretty heavy psychic defense training after Peabody's betrayal, but I had no idea how those defenses'd stand up to this, and...

Snape grabbed my face and dragged my chin up so that I was staring right into his eyes.

I barely had time to groan "Hell's bells, not _again_..." before the soulgaze took hold.

When my vision cleared, I was standing on a tiny plot of land that reminded me bizarrely of Liberty Island in New York. All around, the sea was being churned into a sullen froth by a wind that made no sound. On the island itself, the air had the dead calm of a long-undisturbed tomb, with only the lingering, musty odour of its long-dead vegetation to give it character. And above me towered an immense female figure carved of some silvery metal. I didn't recognize her, but some part of me was perfectly certain that it was Lily Potter. Well, a winged version of her, but still.

And looming above even the titanic statue was the Dark Mark, glowing the same poisonous green as the lightning in Dumbledore's soul. I was pretty sure that I'd find Snape crushed between the two. With a heavy sigh, I willed myself up there.

Up close, the Dark Mark was a howling vortex, and I was pretty sure that it was what had drained the life from Snape's soul-island.

I had been right about Snape being between the statue and the Mark, although I have to admit that I was a little surprised to find him _chained_ to the statue, completely airborne otherwise, twisting in the horrific updrafts that the otherworldly green skull was generating. He was flopping so lifelessly that I was sure that his neck had broken at least three times in the brief moment I was 'standing' there, but his eyes still snapped open to give me a near-feral stare.

"_**GET. OUT.**_"

*****

Speaking of surprises, I wish I could say that I'd been surprised to wake up in the infirmary. Really, the only question I had was whether Snape had tried to murder me for poking around in his brain, or if there had just been some kind of backlash from the weird, abortive Soulgaze that I seemed to be doing here.

Madam Pomfrey came bustling in and pushed me back down from where I'd started to sit up.

"Just rest." she said. "Professor Snape has assured me that it was simply an experiment in occlumency that went awry- honestly, that man. Said something about you seeming to have astonishingly powerful natural shields, and his enthusiasm for testing got the better of him. He wishes to apologize in person once I have finished with you, if that's alright with you."

She raised a questioning eyebrow at me. I raised two right back at her. That... really hadn't been on my list of likely- or even **possible**- responses. I shrugged carefully and nodded to her, not quite trusting myself to speak yet.

Snape stalked in, then just stood there and glared at me in silence until Madam Pomfrey got the hint and left, huffing slightly.

After a long, tense silence, Snape hissed "So, boy. I don't know how you gained the headmaster's trust so easily, but you may rest assured that I am not so easily gulled."

I raised an impressed eyebrow. Not even the Merlin played his cards _that_ close to the vest, and he was paranoid even by _wizard_ standards. Dear old Dumbles apparently held the old chestnut about 'if two people know something, it's not a secret' a little more literally than most. Either that or he expected Snape to pop his last few screws if he got a good look at the script.

_Or he just doesn't trust you yet._ A dry voice from the back of my mind chipped in. I ignored it. I didn't really expect Dumbledore to just up and trust me, less than a week in. At least, I don't think I did.

I jumped a bit when I realized that Snape was still staring at me. Seeing that he finally had my attention again, he continued.

"Now. Who, and what, are you."

I sighed. I had the annoying feeling that I was going to be answering that question a lot.

"As I said, my name is Harry." I told him. "And as best I can tell, I come from another world entirely." I paused. "Unless those Scottish guidebooks I was reading had some amazingly glaring omissions, anyhow."

Snape made an impatient noise, which I ignored. "Oh, and no, I don't know how I got into Harry Potter's body, nor do I have any real desire to stay here. Nor," I continued, ignoring another noise from Snape, "can I tell if the kid is still in here. If he is, he hasn't manifested in any way I can perceive."

I stopped and looked at Snape. He looked about the same as he always seemed to- pale, remote, and so grouchy that you'd think that not only was life giving him lemons, it was giving them as a suppository.

This... didn't really give me a lot to work with. I'd been so worried about getting Dumbledore on board that I hadn't really realized that I'd have to convince at least a few of the other staff members as well. So I didn't have a lot of ammunition for Snape. Still, I was pretty sure I remembered a few things.

Snape was still glaring at me, turning slowly darker. Apparently my tuning him out repeatedly didn't sit well with him.

I'm not sure I would have expected someone who was almost always so pale to manage that shade of purple, but I didn't really feel like being grilled by him for any longer than I had to, especially since this body seemed to need more sleep than I was used to. Growing boys etcetera, I guess.

So I cut him off before he could speak. Again. "Look. Even if you think that I'm just Harry Potter, only insane... you **know** that we share at least one reason to want to see old Moldy squashed like a bug."

I saw Snape's mouth start to form 'Mold..?' before he caught himself and glared at me. It was an impressive glare.

And at that point, I had to remind myself of something. Snape might have been a pretentious, bullying jerk who desperately needed to learn to let things go, but he was also a dedicated, dangerous, and fully competent practitioner. I have to admit that I tended to get carried away with rooting for Harry to make Snape look like an idiot when I was watching the movies. I don't like bullies. But facing down Snape _as_ Harry? Yeah, that was a little different.

Although seriously, holding a schoolyard grudge for something like twenty years?

I managed to return Snape's glare with an impassive stare, or at least a blank enough look that you could probably mistake it for one, but I still had to blink first. Snape seemed to think that was great, but he silently savoured his smugness a split-second too long, and I managed to get in the first word.

"Lily Evans-Potter." I said quietly. "Harry Potter's mother. Your unrequited love. And Voldemort stole that from both of us."

Snape froze, going almost perfectly still, then just standing there for a moment. I watched him impassively. I'd played my cards, and now it was time to see if I'd taken the hand or busted.

Eventually, he said "Very well, Mister Potter. No matter who you really are, if you are working to bring down Voldemort, then you can work unimpeded by me." His face took on a brief look of cruel amusement as he turned to go.

"And I will be looking forward to seeing what the Boy Who Lived can do that the entirety of the rest of the wizarding world could not." he added, pausing in the doorway.

"I live to serve, o' Half-Blood Prince." I said.

Snape went rigid in the doorway, but by the time he had turned around, I had already turned over, and his scorching glare bounced harmlessly off the blankets.

*****

Over the next week or so, both Dumbledore and Snape retreated to their respective corners, keeping their contact with me to basically nothing. Which was fine by me, since it meant I was free to learn Potterverse magic as quickly as I could manage.

Which turned out to be not very. I was starting to feel like a neurosurgeon trying to perform open-heart surgery. Sure, when you got right down to it, all surgery is just a matter of shuffling around squishy bits, but which squishy bit does what matters more than most people would think in that kind of situation. And I just couldn't seem to stop prodding the wrong squishy bits. I'd gotten some fairly spectacular results, but I don't think I'd ever gotten the right ones. And I'm sure that I wasn't the only one who was feeling a bit relieved that there wasn't going to be any wand use in flying class.

The downside was that we were stuck sharing flight space with the Slytherin goon squad. Ron was grumbling about having to share the flight class, and I have to admit that I joined him. I'm sure that there were some Slytherins that were perfectly nice, but anytime that we had contact with them, it meant that I had to put up with the weasel.

Sure enough, Malfoy was there, Crabbe and Goyle... I never did figure out which of them was which... lurking behind him like malformed shadows. The three of them were tormenting Neville, whose owl mail that morning had contained what seemed to basically be the magic eight-ball version of tying a string around your finger. Even now, I'm still not sure how sanitary it was to have a bunch of birds delivering mail during breakfast. I don't think I'd gotten any surprise seasonings on my plate yet, but it really did seem like it was only a matter of time.

Anyhow, the day seemed to be pretty good flying weather, and I was nearly impressed by the safety precautions that Madame Hooch was taking. At least until Neville managed to absent-mindedly break his wrist. I swear, that kid was spending nearly as much time in the infirmary as the nurse. Healer. Matron. Whatever.

Cue the weasel finding Neville's dropped magic eight-ball basically the second the teacher was out of earshot.

And, of course, cue me losing my temper, just like the other Harry.

Which is how I found myself sixty feet off the ground, exchanging glares with a little kid who just happened to be the same age and size as the body I was wearing at the moment.

Isn't life fun?


	6. Chapter 6

I feinted at Malfoy, the broomstick darting forward under my improbably sure guidance. I'm not sure if it was some kind of instinct or what, but I... or at least my body... seemed to know exactly how to make the broom flit around like a swallow. This was probably a good thing, since I never did figure out exactly how those things were controlled.

Malfoy jerked out of the way, his self-assured smirk slipping slightly as the wind of my passage ruffled his hair. He was good, no doubt about it; his broom jinking and weaving confidently through the air, but he was playing crow to my hawk, and from the look slowly crossing his face, we both knew it.

"Hey Drakey." I taunted. "You forgot your goons."

The weasel's eyes slipped sideways, darting a nervous glance at the small crowd of Slytherins at ground level. They were willing enough to cheer him on, but didn't seem too inclined to join him flying the unfriendly skies.

My confidence was growing, and I started maneuvering more aggressively. I whipped past the weasel, so close that I actually heard his sharp intake of breath doppler, and jolted into a sharp climbing turn, intending to dive-bomb him on the return pass.

That train of thought was derailed when a couple of the lower portions of my anatomy informed me with brutal clarity that if I kept doing things like that, there wasn't going to be enough _left_ of them to drop in a year or two. I managed to keep my reaction limited to my eyes bugging out a bit, but stars and stones... if this was the standard mode of transportation in the magical community, no wonder their birthrate was low.

Malfoy, meanwhile, took advantage of my brief distraction to get some distance between us, and, apparently deciding that cowardice was the better part of weaseldom, hurled the magic eight-ball away in a high arc.

"You want it so bad, Potter, go get it!" he yelled.

"You throw like a girl!" I snapped back, reflexively swooping my broom after the glittering magic whatever-it-was.

As I hunched low over the broomhandle, very nearly my entire being focused on the falling sphere, I made a mental note to take my witty banter in for a tuneup. I know a few of my foes... and friends... would claim not to see much difference in the maturity of my repartee, but that had just been embarassing. As I dove, the wind of my passage howling in my ears, something near the back of my brain pointed out that not only was the ground getting very close very quickly, it was about to make the 'terminal' part of 'terminal velocity' a bit more literal than I'd like.

I ignored this. My self-preservation instincts and I have never really been on the best of terms.

That and I wasn't entirely sure how to stop.

My fingers clamped shut over the magic eight-ball, which promptly shone brilliantly scarlet.

I started violently and stared at it for a split-second. Then I remembered that I was still about to hit the ground. As the red glow winked out, I jerked back spasmodically, my broom shuddered and heated up, shedding just enough velocity for me to hit the ground in a tumbling roll, landing in a dramatic crouch that left me briefly thankful I was in a kid's body. If I had been in my own body, I think I would have blown out my knees.

And of course, the ball promptly glowed red again. I blinked at it.

Then a hand grabbed my wrist, and as the ball winked out once more, I groaned "Aw, crap..." in my best Ron Perlman.

"Indeed." Professor McGonagall said crisply from behind me, the only evidence of her anger a slight tremor in her voice.

*****

Long story short, I wound up on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Yay. At least I had my own broom now. I wasn't sure how enthused I was about the whole sports thing, but if nothing else, being able to fly without needing to liberate one of the school brooms was likely to be handy. Ron, naturally, thought this was wonderful. I mustered up as much enthusiasm as I could manage, but it wasn't exactly easy.

I kept on, though. I wasn't planning on playing the wrong Harry a split-second longer than I absolutely had to, and I didn't want to screw the poor kid's life up any worse than I already had. So alienating his best friend for my own convenience wasn't really on the menu.

Even so, the next month and a half or thereabouts was surprisingly... almost refreshingly... routine. Classes, studying, practicing two different forms of magic... oh, and hauling my carcass all over Hogwarts' local airspace chasing a gold pingpong ball with wings and an attitude problem. At least the Nimbus 2000 that I had gotten from Professor McGonagall had a cushioning charm that worked properly. That part I liked. I'm fully in favor of anything that reduces my chances of being the lead in an impromptu solo performance of The Nutcracker.

One or two things made for small breaks in the routine- I was putting out feelers for contacts of my own, which is harder than it sounds when you're eleven. Still, by carefully working the whole 'boy who lived' angle, I was able to get myself heard in a few places. I couldn't be sure what kind of response I'd get, but I figured I had to try.

The other thing that took me out of routine every once in a while was trying to get myself a gun. The way wizards here thought about self-defense was so bass-ackwards that I could probably shoot half of Voldemort's idiots before the rest of them wised up enough to even _try_ to defend themselves. Given gun laws in the UK, getting a pistol wasn't going to be happening even if I hadn't been munchkin-sized, which was kind of a shame. I'd be lying if there wasn't part of me that thought it would be pretty cool to draw on Voldemort.

Still, I hoped that Dumbledore would spring Sirius Black from jail soon- he was pretty much my best hope for getting a rifle or a shotgun, as far as I could tell.

Of course, even with the routine, some parts were a little rougher than the others. The day things started getting interesting again, I ended the 'school' part of the day being called up on the carpet by Professor Flitwick. The day's attempt at _Wingardium Leviosa_ had ended with, apparently to no-one's surprise but my own, yet another explosion. In my defense, it made it hard to concentrate on casting when my classmates dove for cover every time I moved my wand.

"I'm not sure if I should congratulate you or expel you, Potter." the little old professor squeaked irritably. "You seem to have managed to independently create _Confringo_, _Bombarda_, _Expulso_, the Cracker Jinx, and _Reducto_, along with all twenty-six of their respective recognized variants. Also two entirely new ones for Reducto and **three** for Bombarda."

He shook his head in annoyance, his curly beard bobbing around. "I simply do not know what to think. You clearly have an enormous talent, yet it only seems to manifest itself as explosions. Were you a little older, I would think you were simply being contrary, or possibly somewhat mad. But as it stands, I am starting to wonder if _I_ am the one who is going mad."

I shrugged helplessly. "I have no idea what's going on, Professor." I told him with perfect honesty.

Professor Flitwick stared at me for a moment, then sighed heavily and sat down on his usual stack of books. I really had to wonder why he didn't just conjure up a chair that fit him better, but he seemed to have his own way of doing things. After a moment, he waved me silently out of the room, and I wandered cautiously toward the door. As I reached it, it suddenly snapped shut.

I spun around to find Flitwick pointing his wand sternly at me. "I have come to a decision, Mister Potter." he said.

I swallowed. Flitwick might be tiny even compared to my current height, but I knew better than to judge him by that.

"You, Mister Potter..." he said, then trailed off.

I kept looking at him.

"You will be tutored by Hermione Granger." he finished with another heavy sigh.

I blinked at him. "Uh... what?"

He waggled his wand like it was a long, bony finger. "Now, now, Mister Potter. No point in arguing. I have already cleared it with the Headmaster and your head of house, and both have agreed. Perhaps you will show more care if you cannot rely upon me to contain your... accidents."

I made a non-commital noise. Apparently the professor didn't think I had noticed that it was actually Hermione who caught a few of the explosions before he could. Mostly because she was much closer, granted, but I'll give the girl this much- she might have been an annoying, prissy know-it-all, but she learned _fast_.

After a moment, I shrugged. A bit sullenly, I have to admit. Magic had always been my 'thing', and needing an eleven-year-old to explain the basics to me didn't sit very well. But, at the same time, it worked. Once I got out of this body... I squelched the part of me that wanted to add 'if I got out' as hard as I could... little Harry probably needed more of a life to come back to than 'learn magic, kill Voldemort, get out'.

Professor Flitwick softened a little when he saw my expression. He grabbed a couple of pieces of parchment from his desk and flicked his wand at them with a murmur of "_Proteus_."

Then he held the two pieces of parchment out to me.

"What is written upon the one will appear on the other, and vice versa." he said briefly by way of explanation. "With these, you should be able to arrange your tutoring times with a minimum of... interference... from the other students."

He blinked puzzledly at me after a moment when he realized I still hadn't taken the parchments. I was frozen in place, one hand outstretched, staring at him.

Then I blurted "Ican'tbelieveIdidn'tthinkofthissooner... thanksProfessorbye!"

And I was out the door and gone before he could even close his mouth.

*****

A short while later found me in the dormitories in Gryffindor tower (and there's a part of me that still can't believe I'm writing that), scrabbling frantically through a drawer to dig out a spare scrap of parchment. Once I had found one, I sucked idly on my quill for a moment, thinking. Then I started to write.

_Ivy. It's Harry Dresden. _

_I'm not sure how much time has passed in our world since I ended up here, but I'm at Hogwarts. Or at least a __**really**__ convincing hallucination of it._

_Oh, and I'm trapped in Harry Potter's eleven-year-old body._

I stopped for a moment and glared at the sheet of parchment.

"Hell's **bells**, that sounds stupid..." I muttered to myself, but shrugged and kept writing.

_And yes, I know how stupid that sounds. If you get this message, please see if you can get some help to Karrin Murphy in Chicago. Oh, and to me, too._

_Somehow._

_Take care of yourself, kid,_  
_Harry_

_P.S.- If you can figure out a way to get someone here before I have to go through puberty again, that'd be great._

I stared at the short note for a while longer, then sighed and folded it up, tucking it into the rolled-up socks at the bottom of my... of Harry's trunk.

And then nearly jumped out of my skin when my hand brushed something slithery and soft.

When nothing leapt out of the trunk to try and eat my face, I reached cautiously back down to grab whatever it was. When I pulled my arm back out, my hand was missing entirely.

My first thought was that something with a numbing venom had just eaten my hand. As I took a deep breath that was definitely for the purpose of getting ready to do battle, and not for screaming like a little girl, my brain kicked in. It informed me that a) I was a moron, and b) I could still feel my hand. Oh, and c) that I knew perfectly well that little Harry had an invisibility cloak. And d) I was still a moron.

Once my brain had finished insulting me, I allowed myself a slow, evil grin.

"I love it when a plan comes together." I murmured out loud.

... okay, so I was exaggerating. The cloak was something like step two out of several thousand, but when things go right for you as often as they do for me, you learn to take pleasure in the small things. Hey, I might even break my own record and have things go right _three_ times in a row.

You'd think that, by now, I'd know better than to even think things like that.

*****

Much to my extremely poorly feigned surprise, Hermione did not believe in wasting time. The second I emerged from the boys' wing of the tower, she was trying to drag me off to the library. I did my best to ignore her, squeezing past to scramble out the portrait hole. That worked about as well as you'd expect.

"You really need to get your marks up, you know." she said.

I'm not sure if it was the first thing she'd said since she followed me out into the hallway. I'd kind of tuned out in mid-flow when she first accosted me in the common room. Unfortunately, tuning her out didn't seem to be working anymore, mostly because there weren't thirty-some-odd other kids charging around to drown her out.

Ron was just coming the other way, and I nodded to him. He gave Hermione an odd look, and I shrugged and sighed.

"Professor Flitwick decided that she had to tutor me."

Ron winced in sympathy, and Hermione fixed him with a gimlet stare.

"_We're_ going to the library to study." she snapped. "This is important, unless you think Harry should be expelled too." she added, giving me a dirty look.

Ron looked at me with an expression that was half-smirk and half-sympathetic, and hopped into the portrait hole, which swung shut behind him.

"Come on, before there are any more interruptions." Hermione said impatiently.

When I didn't respond, she kept going. "If you keep blowing up the charms classroom, you're going to get into an awful lot of trouble. Or do you _want_ to get expelled? I hear they snap your wand, and you're prohibited from doing magic ever again!"

I sighed and kept going. I didn't really have anyplace more important to be, but Hermione's nagging had kicked in my stubborn streak, and I wasn't about to give in too easily. We wandered through the castle for a while, with her always sticking too close for me to lose her in a side passage. Apparently she was taking this assignment very seriously, which I guess shouldn't surprise me, given how she was in the first few books.

It was somewhere around her third repetition of the horrors of being expelled (getting more awful every time) that Fred Weasley popped out from behind a statue and snagged me.

"She's here, Harry. Watch yourself, mate. George has an eye out for Dumbledore, but he didn't look like he was going to be gone long- just down to the village to fetch someone- and even we're not sure how he gets around." he told me in an undertone.

Huh. Rita Skeeter already? I'd expected to have to wait at least another month or two before getting her attention- last I'd heard, she was still busy doing a hatchet job a cauldron manufacturer in one of those tiny English towns with a stupid name. Granted, that didn't narrow things down much- I've always wondered if all these weird British place names weren't a giant, elaborate practical joke that got out of hand about six hundred years ago. Either that or some kind of insane strategy to confuse invaders by making it impossible for anyone to give directions without sounding either deranged or drunk. Or both.

Fred had watched me curiously, then shrugged and added "We ditched the old frump in the library." before vanishing again, this time through a tapestry.

Great. Not likely to have a whole lot of luck getting rid of Hermione when I was going there.

Hermione, apparently reading my mind, piped up with "Good. At least now I'll have some luck getting you to the library to study."

"AFTER the interview, alright?" I complained. "This is kind of important."

She shrugged. "I'm not letting you out of my sight until you've gotten some studying in."

I sighed and led the way towards the library.

Rita Skeeter was squatting near the black magic section like a predatory cherub disguised as a badly-aging socialite. When I came into view, her jowls quivered into something that was probably supposed to be a disarming smile, the false jewels in her glasses sparkling like a broken stars. Her poison-green quill appeared in her fingers so fast that even magic couldn't quite explain it, and she leaned forwards.

"Harry Potter. The boy who lived." she murmured, almost purring.

I felt my lips peel back from my teeth.

"Beetle Skeeter." I purred right back at her.

Her smile froze so abruptly that tiny cracks appeared in the makeup around the corners of her mouth, and her eyes widened very slightly. Hermione, thankfully, didn't notice. She had stopped staring at Skeeter as soon as I'd said her name, and was now busy trying to find a copy of the Daily Prophet.

"No, no, I'm almost certain her name is RITA Skeeter..." she muttered, and wandered off to try and find a paper with which to correct me.

I took a brief moment to be thankful that Hermione was tired enough from haranguing me for more than an hour to be distractable, then returned my attention to Skeeter.

Her eyes had gone shrewd in the split second I had turned my attention slightly to watch Hermione go, and I narrowed mine in return.

"Don't bother." I told her flatly. "You're an unregistered animagus, and you've been using it to spy on people for your little character assassinations that you pretend are articles."

Skeeter hesitated. "So, what do you want?" she asked, keeping a wary eye on Hermione's progress through the library.

I tilted my head at her. I'd gone over and over what I could say to her for more than a month. Rita Skeeter was the living incarnation of libellous scandalmongering, with her scarlet claw firmly on the pulse of public opinion. Handled carefully, she could be a potent weapon in heading off the second wizarding war before it ever happened. Screw up, and she could get me harassed incessantly, banished, locked in Azkaban, killed by a violent mob, or who knows what else.

"Your little green quill works for me now." I told her bluntly. "Knowing you, you've managed to weasel at least some info out of the Ministry about the Hall of Prophecy. So you know as well as I do that things aren't going to stay as happy and peaceful as they are now."

Skeeter didn't say anything, didn't even move. She was staring at me the way people stare at an unexploded bomb that has suddenly started ticking.

I gave her a small, bitter smile. The look was a little too familiar.

"I'm not going to interfere with you much." I told her. "Just... every once in a while, I'll give you a target to dig up dirt on. I want to see it first, before even your editor does- and I want to see the _real_ info, not your re-written hatchet job stuff- and I'll say if you can't publish something, but other than that, just do what you do best."

She gave a small half-nod, still watching me very carefully.

"Don't worry. Your first target from me is one I think you'll like. How would you like the ID of a high-ranking member of Fudge's government who is a raging bigot, a closet sadist, a practicioner of the dark arts, and probably completely insane? One who will go up like a volcano if you apply the right pressure, and maybe even destabilize that idiot Fudge's hold on power?"

Rita Skeeter's expression hadn't changed, but there was a hungry gleam in her eyes. She was sharp enough that she wasn't snapping up the bait right away, but she was just about salivating.

I turned to watch Hermione, who was rummaging through a stack of old newspapers. After a moment, I gave Skeeter a sidelong glance.

"Umbridge." was all I said.

At that, she froze. I could almost see the wheels spinning in her head as she started to put facts together. The green quill started to quiver, but she shoved it into her ugly purse and stood abruptly. She glanced at me, nodded more firmly, then waddled out of the library at a speed that I wouldn't have thought she could manage.

I sighed and let myself relax a little, then yelped and fell off the stool when Hermione shoved a newspaper in my face and said "See, I told you her name was Rita... oh. Where did she go? Wait, where did you go?"

She looked down. "What are you doing on the floor? You can't study from down there."

I glowered at her, but any scathing retort I could have come up with was choked off by a new voice, one like oiled honey. All velvet inhuman sweetness, deep and quiet and speaking what some part of my brain identified as BBC English.

"Well met, little mortal. You are to be congratulated on a most intriguing stratagem, and one that I would have thought you incapable of, bound in frail meat as you were. Still, you above all others should know that you cannot escape he who is ever behind you." the Outsider purred.


	7. Chapter 7

"Glrk!" I managed.

Hey, if you honestly think you could do better when the worst nightmare in a lifetime of worst nightmares shows up while you're _awake_, ready, able and happy to kill you? Well, good for you. I suppose the Egyptian Riviera _is_ nice this time of year.

I scrambled to a sort of half-sitting position, He Who Walks Behind rising jerkily out of the floor as I did so. I flailed around, trying desperately to spot a reflective surface so I could see the Outsider, then hesitated as Hermione also made a strangled noise.

"What **is** that thing?" she demanded, her voice even more shrill than usual.

I flinched back as the fringes of the psychic assault that made up the Outsider's name washed over me, hatred and fury boiling black in a hideously ancient mind. Then both He Who Walks Behind and I stopped and stared as Hermione staggered to her feet and over to a shelf, grabbing an armload of books without breaking stride and plopping down at a table.

"Some kind of troll, maybe?" she muttered, grabbing a vaguely fanged-looking book that snarled and snapped at her hand.

I gaped as she simply smashed a fist down on the book's cover, apparently stunning it long enough for her to thumb through the index. I was pretty sure that wasn't the way you were supposed to open that one. Another black-burning surge of hate and anger roared past me, actually ruffling Hermione's hair, but she just hunched her shoulders against it and grabbed for another book.

"No, too hairy... not right for a ghoul... maybe an erumpent?.. no, those are quadrupedal... not white enough for a yeti, obviously... maybe a giant grindylow? On land? No..." she mumbled with a puzzled frown.

At that point, her reading was interrupted by two things.

Just barely first came my yelling of "_Reparo_!", which summoned a moderate explosion that blew her off her seat and set some of the books on fire. No, I don't know why I tried for that one, it was just the first spell that came to mind. Also, if I'd tried for an actual explosion spell, it probably would have gone wrong too, except without the explosion I needed.

The second thing to interrupt was a bellow of rage from He Who Walks Behind as he clawed Hermione's workstation into a cloud of toothpicks and confetti.

The Outsider seemed to be having some trouble with his physical form- he was sort of visible even without a reflection, flickering like... well, pretty much every TV screen I'd been near since I was about twelve... and he seemed to be flickering in and out of tangibility involuntarily, and in more or less the same pattern. He was moving awkwardly, too- gliding with serpentine grace through a series of lurching stumbles that looked almost like bad stop-motion animation.

I didn't have a lot of time to think about it, though, because awkward or not, the thing moved fast. Although I think it was even more surprised than I was when it collided with an abruptly-opened door with enough force crack the thick, ancient wood.

Ron, who was apparently too excited to notice the door stall for a second, appeared through it, shouting "Harry! Harry! Dumbledore is calling for us and... _good bloody hell, what is __**that**__?!_"

"RON!" I screamed in frustration. "Run! No, _out_ of the library!"

The Outsider had hesitated, staring from one of us to the other as he flickered and lurched. Then a... I can't think of any other way to describe it other than a 'squadron'... of books shot over the shelves and dive-bombed the monstrous apparition, hammering off his head with a noise like somebody shuffling a cosmic-sized deck of cards. He Who Walks Behind staggered sideways, and I grabbed Hermione from where she'd been sprawled staring at him.

The two of us sprinted past the Outsider, diving and rolling under a claw swipe before popping back up again and racing towards the door. Ron, showing more presence of mind than I would have given him credit for a moment ago, bashed the Walker with the door again when it chased us. Then Madame Pince strode out from between the bookshelves, wreathed in a halo of power and surrounded by a fluttering cloud of airborne books, loose pages whirling like windborne blades.

He Who Walks Behind whirled and stretched his scabrous jaw wide, a roar of challenge ripping out of his throat. The roar cut off abruptly in a series of hacking coughs as the librarian simply gave a contemptuous flick of her wand, sending a pair of particularly ratty-looking volumes that must have weighed in at three thousand pages apiece rocketing down the Outsider's throat, nearly taking it off its feet.

"Go." she snapped, not even bothering to look at us.

We didn't argue. The three of us turned as one and sprinted away down the corridor. He Who Walks Behind's bellow of rage shook dust out of the rafters, at least until it was once again interrupted by what sounded like another book to the throat.

"Dumbledore called for us and said to bring Scabbers and we were to be on our best behaviour and what's going on Harry?" Ron managed to pant out.

"Not sure, shut up and run." I panted back.

Hermione, meanwhile, was muttering to herself still.

"I'll explain once we've gotten to Dumbledore." I managed to gasp out.

It was easy to forget, given how young this body was, that it wasn't necessarily in as good a shape as my original body. Harry Dresden, late-thirty-something-wizard of the White Council, ran regularly and participated in hand-to-hand combat training. Not for health reasons or anything... at least, not directly... but so that I could run away from large things with nasty teeth, or punch them in the face failing all else.

Harry Potter, pre-teen(?) wizard of Hogwarts, on the other hand, got most of his excercise on a broomstick, and had been at least slightly malnourished for most of his life. Long story short? I was getting winded. Bad. I'd better hope that Madame Pince was able to keep the Walker busy long enough for me to get to the Headmaster's office. I'm not sure what I expected Dumbledore to be able to do to He Who Walks Behind, but like I'd said before, dear old Dumbles seemed to be the exception to a lot of rules, no matter what universe they were from.

We'd already climbed up two floors, but by unspoken consent, all three of us sagged against various walls near the last staircase we'd have to climb to reach the entrance to Dumbledore's office. All three of us were breathing hard- none of us were particularly out of shape, three cheers for being young, but the average kid isn't going to sprint up two ungodly long flights of stairs and through more than a mile of corridors on anything like a regular basis. And by this point, the adrenaline was wearing off. We simply couldn't maintain the pace.

He Who Walks Behind gave a roar from directly behind us, loud enough to shake the thick stone walls.

"Adrenaline's back!" I blurted, and all three of us crashed into one another trying to sprint through the doorway simultaneously.

We tumbled backwards, landing in a tangled heap, and I had a wonderful view of the Walker's blurring, shifting form as it lurched spasmodically towards us, yellow-fanged mouth agape. Hermione made a small noise, almost a whimper, and I felt my guts light on fire.

No.

_Hell_ no.

I jerked an arm free, jabbed it at the oncoming monstrosity, and howled "_FUEGO_!" at the top of my lungs.

Molten gold light sprayed from my fingers, and Ron yelped as it passed by close enough to singe his eyebrows.

The stream of flame washed over the Walker, who recoiled, wailing in wordless agony. Briefly. Then the scream trailed off into an urbane chuckle.

"Really, starchild, is that what you thought would happen?" he murmured as the flames began to clear.

He started forwards, then stopped short as the flames cleared entirely, revealing Dumbledore standing between him and us.

"You are not welcome in my school, creature." the headmaster snapped.

The old professor made a short, calm motion with his wand, and He Who Walks Behind was smashed backwards and down by unseen force, a brief flare of blue light the only hint as to what was happening. There was a clatter from the stairs behind us, and a short chubby guy wearing a lime-green bowler hat and an inflated sense of self-importance came barging down, followed closely by two big guys who carried themselves like professionals.

"Now see here, Dumbledore." the little guy huffed. "As minister for magic, I am not used to being dragged about in the dead of night and... good heavens, what _is_ that?!"

Oh, good. They were from the government, and they were here to help.

Then again, maybe the big pros actually were. Both of them had stepped in front of the Minister, and the larger of the two, a massive, broad-shouldered black man with one gold earring, had actually moved far enough forwards to get between us and the monster. He murmured something under his breath, and a shield snapped up in front of us all. As he was doing that, his counterpart, a rough-looking customer that looked a bit like an ex-marine, with his close-cropped grey hair and competent demeanour, had sent at least half a dozen spells howling down the corridor to curve around Dumbledore and slam into the Walker.

He Who Walks Behind largely ignored the lightshow and concentrated on Dumbledore. Who, quite naturally, simply slammed him into the floor again. I grinned, fairly sure I'd spotted the trick this time; Dumbledore was taking a page from the Aes Sedai and hardening the air briefly to make a battering ram. Thus confusing both the borderline magic-immune monster and his erstwhile allies, and making him look far more powerful than he was, when in reality, he was mostly just far more intelligent than he looked.

The Walker snarled again, rising from where he'd bounced to, then stopped for a second, his head snapping to an angle pointing down and away from us. Then he made a confused noise and glanced in several other directions, somehow managing to give the impression that he was looking at distant things, before his gaze came to rest on me. And he started to laugh.

Even if it hadn't been coming from a mouth that looked like someone had crossbred a shark with poor dental hygeine and a chainsaw, it would have been an unnerving laugh. Long, deep, and unhinged-sounding.

"Magnificent." the monster finally managed as we all stared at it. Fudge jumped violently when it spoke, but otherwise no-one interrupted. "The situations you petty mortals get in with your concerns about souls and the beyond... simply magnificent."

And with that, he abruptly lurched into blurred motion, straight past all of us and down the stairwell to vanish from sight.

"After him!" Dumbledore shouted, jerking us all into motion. I wasn't sure what I expected to do, given that the thing had shrugged off my current best shot like it hadn't even happened, but I pursued all the same.

I had no idea where we were going, and clearly no-one else did, other than Dumbledore. He led us unerringly to a door that would have looked pretty much the same as any of the others in the area if it wasn't in two pieces on the wrong side of the hallway.

Oh, and if Snape wasn't lying in the wreckage of the door.

The Potions Master seemed slightly disoriented, but he got to his feet in one smooth motion the second he realized we were there.

"Apologies, Professor Dumbledore." he said, an edge of uneasiness in his normally sharp voice. "But some... thing... has interfered with my duties."

Dumbledore simply nodded to him and brushed past, the rest of us trailing after uncertainly, with Snape bringing up the rear, warily eyeing the empty hallway. I hate to admit it, but my respect for him went up another notch. As I've said before, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.

My attention was fairly quickly caught by the two figures in the room. He Who Walks Behind was dangling the body of Quirrell from one hand, examining it with an unreadable expression on his alien face. Although something about his posture managed to suggest amusement.

Dumbledore raised his wand, and the Walker glanced at him, then smirked and, with a surge of power, jolted Quirrell awake.

******

I can't honestly say I remember much about the next few minutes, mostly because the big gray-haired guy (whose name I later learned was Dawlish) clipped me upside the head with his elbow when he whirled to target Voldemort. This had two unfortunate effects; the first one was tossing me headfirst into a wall where I concussed myself nicely, and the second that he numbed his arm and lost his wand, helping both the Outsider and Voldemort to escape.

Well, maybe. I can't say that he'd impressed me much that far.

At first, I thought the concussion was responsible, but the first voice I heard when I regained consciousness was a woman's. I mumbled something unintelligible, and she repeated herself.

"I said, godson, that you do pick the most entertaining enemies."

Lovely. My faerie godmother was here.

"Hello, Lea. Any chance I could trade you back for the unkillable monster and the evil dark lord?" I said.

My godmother laughed, the tinkling, unearthly laughter of the Sidhe.

Dumbledore glanced at her sharply, then said "Mister Weasley, Minister, if you'd be so kind. We have some items in my office that require our attention."

Fudge, who was gaping openly at Lea, shook himself and turned to the headmaster. "Yes... yes, that would likely be good."

With several more curious glances at Lea, Dumbledore's contingent trooped out.

Dawlish hesitated for a second, then, with a glare shared equally with everyone left in the room, trailed after the minister. The big black guy... Kingsley something, I think..? somewhat to my surprise, stayed for a moment, watching Lea warily.

After a moment or two of everyone looking from me to Lea and back with varying degrees of hostility, confusion, suspicion, and various other emotions, Snape made an impatient noise and dug around in a bag that I hadn't noticed near the wreckage of the bed that Voldemort had been lying in. After a moment, he dug out a flask full of something that was bubbling, steaming, and a shade of orange so violent that it was making my headache worse just looking at it.

Then he stalked over to where I was lying, grabbed my nose to pinch it shut and tilt my head back, and poured the whole frighteningly orange mess down my throat. This had the entirely predictable result of making me cough, choke, and splutter, but Snape was merciless, and his hold on my nose forced me to either swallow or drown.

"Drink, boy." Snape growled. "The last thing I need is for something as trivial as a brain injury making you even stupider than you already are."

I tried to snark back something about him taking comfort in the fact that he was perfectly safe from that, but it was probably spoiled by the fact that I was coughing too hard for anyone to understand a word of it. And when I went to try again, I found that along with the predictable result of making me hack up a lung, the orange crap was also clearing up my headache and I was finding I could think more clearly. I don't know if I ever got used to how easy, even casual, healing was in this universe.

Lea was giving me a very interested look as my head cleared, before glancing at Snape while wearing a fascinated expression. I stifled a chuckle at her carefully-hidden confusion. Lea was one of the very few that had managed to heal me by magic in my own world, but that had been a terrifyingly unique situation involving me allowing her direct power over me through broken vows and my own stupidity, and even then, it had only been closing a nasty cut on my head.

It hadn't been anything near as complex as a closed-head brain injury (what? It's happened to me often enough that I've learned the proper medical term for it), which she could no more have healed than she could have taught me to fly using fairy dust.

... which she can't do, just for the record.

And now, she was thinking that Snape was either vastly more than he seemed, or else that he had somehow gained absolute power over me. Either scenario promised to be at least mildly amusing as Snape and my godmother circled one another like wary cats.

Speaking of which...

"Everyone, this is my godmother, the Leanandsidhe. She's basically second-in-command of the Unseelie Fae, the Winter Court. If you like keeping your soul and not being a dog, I'd advise against making any deals with her, saying anything that could be construed as being a deal, or even nodding at the wrong time."

This earned me a round of blank stares, and a reproving smile from Lea.

"Really, dear, you make me sound like some kind of monster." she paused, then shrugged a little. "Which, I suppose, is fair enough, at least from your limited perspective."

This earned _her_ a round of blank stares, and I sighed.

"Lea, why... wait, no, _how_ are you here?"

My godmother sniffed disapprovingly. "Really, dear, you shouldn't be so dense. The answers are, of course, connected."

I hesitated. I hated dealing with the fae, although at least Lea hadn't tried to turn me into a dog this time. Yet. But they didn't- _couldn't_- lie. They could twist their words so badly that they could seem to be telling you the sky was fluorescent pink, but they couldn't do so directly. And they gave out knowledge about as cheerfully as Scrooge paying taxes. But Lea was under some kind of obligation to help me, teach me even. So she was giving me at least _something_ here.

I frowned. "If He Who Walks Behind is here... the Nevernever?" I hazarded.

"Yes, my dear boy. Everything that is connects to it, even if some are harder to reach than others. And if you are going to go about firing off... oh, what are those cute little human things? distress flares?.. into the aether, do not be surprised if your allies are not the only ones to see them. Although gaining the affection of the Archive was quite clever. For a mortal, of course." she told me.

Another frown from me. "Affection? Don't you mean attention?"

"That too. But I really cannot stay for long; magic is strange in this world, and the wards on this place... well, you saw how they affected even that Outsider."

Actually, I hadn't even had time to think about what had been happening with He Who Walks Behind, other than to notice that something was hinky. That wasn't something I was about to admit to my godmother, though. Nominally on my side though she was, the winter fae were simply far too predatory to show even a tiny bit of weakness around them. So I just nodded, thinking fast.

"How do I contact you if I need to, Lea?" I asked, settling for the most obvious question first.

"Oh, I'll be around." she said cheerfully, then faded out.

I opened my mouth, then closed it, sighing. "We should probably go see what's going on with Professor Dumbledore."

The others just nodded, looking a bit stunned.

As we trailed through the hallways and up the last couple of floors, I continued to think. Apparently, my shot in the dark had made it to the Nevernever, although whether or not it had reached Ivy I had no idea. I was pretty sure that she wouldn't have sent Lea, and I was _damn_ sure that she wouldn't have sent the Outsider. Having Lea around was marginally better than no help at all, though. Probably.

And my godmother had made two apparently-casual comments- the first one, about everything existing in the Nevernever, wasn't exactly new information to me. But it **was** one more hint that this probably wasn't just a brain-damaged fever dream.

And the second comment, about the Hogwarts' wards messing with both her and He Who Walks Behind, was very, very interesting. He Who Walks Behind could normally shed magic like a duck shedding water, and Lea was second only to the Queen of Air and Darkness herself, Mab, in the Winter Court. Even allowing for differences in magic, neither of them should have even been in a position to even **notice** human-made wards, at least non-destructive ones.

As we approached the gargoyles that marked the entrance to the Headmaster's office, Ron caught up with him. Apparently Dumbledore had sent him back to the Gryffindor dorms, since he now had the cage with his rat in it, and was looking more than a little apprehensive.

I just shook my head at him. I had a pretty good idea of what was coming next, and I didn't think he was going to take it much better now than he... was going to?.. in three years. I'd been here barely two months, and already the time-travel aspects were giving me a basically constant low-level headache. And that was just from the grammar.

I was starting to think that the when the White Council banned time travel, they were less worried about time paradoxes and more just didn't want their collective heads to explode when they were trying to talk about it.

Snape growled "Every-Flavour Beans." and then stalked off, muttering something that might have been excusing himself, or might just have been him swearing under his breath.

The rest of us trooped upstairs in nervous silence. Nervous mostly because we could hear Fudge yelling as soon as the door opened. Even as annoyed as he was, though, I was pretty sure that the pauses in the shouting were him politely allowing Dumbledore to have his say. Most of it seemed to be him wanting to know what Dumbledore wanted _now_, when he needed to be back at the ministry behind three layers of Aurors and a very thick door.

Dumbledore smiled, his eyes twinkling at us, although the smile was a bit sad, as we all trailed in, Ron hovering near the back, clutching Scabber's cage protectively. Then Dumbledore's smile vanished as he turned back to the Minister of Magic.

"Minister Fudge." he said sternly. "While I do know that preparing for Voldemort's attacks is vital, this is of equal importance. An innocent man has been suffering in Azkaban for ten years, wrongly accused of multiple murders. It is a wonder that he has clung to life this long, and I will not condemn him to rot there any longer, merely for your convenience."

Fudge gulped slightly at Dumbledore's tone, then blinked at his words. "Ten years? Multiple mur... _Black_? You cannot be serious, Dumbledore!"

Then he darted a look at me. "And a cruel joke to make when young Harry is here, as well."

Dumbledore merely nodded. "It would, indeed, be cruel, were it a joke. Mister Weasley, if you would come forwards, and Mister Potter?"

I elbowed Ron, and we moved to the center of the office together, feeling a bit nervous with all the eyes on us.

Then I took a deep breath, leaned in to the rat's cage, and said "Hello, Peter."


	8. Chapter 8

_**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**_

_Sorry for the long delay; meatspace has a way of derailing your plans a bit. By way of apology, have a double-length chapter. Hopefully you won't have to wait as long for the next one._

I heard Fudge inhale so sharply that I thought he was going to pop his lungs, but then the rodent spasmed, expanding abruptly and bursting the cage. When he stopped growing, I thought he'd gotten stuck partway for a moment, since his human form still retained a distinct air of 'rat'. Short, balding, with prominent front teeth and small, rodent-ish eyes, Peter Pettigrew stood before us in his full glory. Such as it was.

The minister of magic was kind of goggling, and the two aurors had their wands out, although both of them were casting covert glances at Dumbledore, who had produced his wand at some point, and, thinking back, probably had something to do with Wormtail's abrupt return to humanity.

Ron had fallen over backwards in utter shock, staring at his former pet, and even I was feeling a bit ill. Ron was a good kid, and a good... friend?.. and didn't really deserve that. Then again, little Harry hadn't deserved having his parents killed either. Life never has been fair.

Since I wasn't sure why I'd consider Ron a friend, given that the age gap just made relating on any meaningful level nearly impossible... even if we were the same age, sort of... I turned my attention to Dumbledore and Fudge.

Dumbledore was saying, perfectly calmly, "Information came to me recently, Minister, and my own investigations bore it out, so I chose to act on it. After all, it would be a terrible thing to keep an innocent man in Azkaban, would it not?"

Fudge was puffing and blowing like he was about to have a stroke, and not terribly coherent. Pettigrew, meanwhile, looked like he was wishing he could disappear, but he'd have more luck spontaneously learning to bypass the Hogwarts anti-teleport ward than he would getting away from under the watchful wands of Dumbledore and two top aurors.

The headmaster, of course, wasn't finished. "You may wish to investigate his forearm, Cornelius, if you doubt me."

The minister kind of twitched, which Kingsley inerpreted as a direction to follow Dumbledore's instructions. Either that or he was simply used to doing what Dumbledore said. He certainly wouldn't be the only one. He didn't even need to move, he was so tall. He just leaned forwards and grabbed Pettigrew's arm, jerking his sleeve up.

This time the minister of magic actually made a noise, a kind of despairing whimper. Clearly visible on Wormtail's forearm was a vivid scarlet skull with a snake oozing out of the jaw.

"The Dark Mark." Dawlish half-whispered.

Then his jaw firmed. "Alright, you. I hope you're looking forwards to Azkaban, because you're never seeing anywhere else."

The tough-looking auror stepped forwards, grabbing Pettigrew by the arm hard enough to make the pudgy little rat yelp. He deftly extracted Wormtail's wand with a casual flick of his own, then hauled him away, storming out the door and down the stairs out of Dumbledore's office, apparently intent on hauling him off to Azkaban right that second.

Dumbledore, however, just cleared his throat, and Dawlish froze two steps down, Pettigrew peering back nervously.

"Peter will have his time before the Wizengamot, John. For the time being, I believe that the holding cells below the court will do." he said with calm seriousness.

Dawlish just nodded sharply, and Wormtail looked slightly green at being hauled out into the public eye. Dumbledore's interjection seemed to have given him back his voice, though, and he started to beg. Unable to kneel properly in Dawlish's grip, he sort of sagged around him, his eyes darting from Dumbledore to Fudge.

"Oh please, give me another chance, I'll be loyal, I'll..." he started.

At that point, I decided he needed some motivation to go in quietly, and stepped forward.

"You killed my parents as surely as if you'd held the wand yourself, Wormtail." I growled. Squeakily. Hell's Bells, but puberty would almost be worth it just so I didn't have to sound like this anymore. "And if you get any bright ideas about running off... just remember which side of Azkaban's walls Sirius is going to be on this time tomorrow. If I were you, the idea of hard walls of stone and law between you and him would be comforting on those cold nights, when you remember that you've betrayed everyone who ever cared for you in exchange for _nothing_."

Pettigrew cringed back from the fury in my eyes. I wasn't acting. I knew too well what being orphaned did to a child, and what growing up without love was like.

I turned away, but paused and glanced back over my shoulder, pinning him with my gaze, not even trying to hide the bitter fury in my voice. "And if you _do_ run, and Sirius doesn't get you? **_I will_**. Azkaban is too good for you."

Then I turned away and kept stonily silent as Wormtail was dragged off, trying to ignore the looks I was getting. Fudge looked confused, Ron slightly impressed, Hermione like she wanted to roll her eyes, Dumbledore a bit worried, and Kingsley just looked... interested.

As Dawlish and Pettigrew started back down the stairs, Wormtail found his voice.

"My master will save me! Lord Voldemort will return, and when he does..." he started, before Dawlish cut him off.

"You-know-who has been back for months, Pettigrew. Isn't all that interested in you, now is he?" the older Auror said, sounding irritated.

Wormtail fell silent after that, something that should have worried me at the time, but I had other things on my mind right then. Mostly Dumbledore, who was giving me a _very_ stern look.

Thankfully, anything he was going to say was interrupted by Fudge, who didn't seem to be all that eager to remain in premises that had housed a mass-murderer so recently. I wouldn't have escaped that easily even then, since Dumbledore ordered us in no uncertain terms to wait in his office while he escorted Fudge out (at the latter's insistence). But the second he got back, Hermione wheeled on me and demanded an explanation for all the people popping up in Hogwarts, since you simply couldn't _do_ that.

Again thankfully, Dumbledore shooed both Ron and Hermione out. I was starting to feel a bit confused with all the emotional flip-flopping, first being afraid to talk to Dumbledore, then thankful that he was the _only_ one I'd have to talk to.

"I think," Dumbledore told them, "that Mister Potter had best explain things to me, first and foremost. I would be greatly appreciative if you would hold these events in confidence, Mister Weasley, Miss Granger."

Ron and Hermione shuffled out the door and down the stairs, Hermione looking a bit mutinous, Ron simply tossing me a glance that said as eloquently as words, 'we'll be talking about this later, mate.'

Once they were out of earshot, Dumbledore flicked his wand and the door closed quite firmly. Then he moved behind his desk and sat down, steepling his fingers and looking at me expectantly.

I sighed and thought for a moment.

"The monster was He Who Walks Behind, an Outsider. They come from... somewhere else, nobody's entirely sure where, since researching them's generally a bad idea. It attracts the wrong sort of attention." I said delicately.

I didn't mention that the 'wrong sort of attention' was as likely to be a Warden from the White Council- like me- being assigned to show up and whack your head off as it was a monster turning up to eat you. Thankfully, so far I hadn't been ordered to do that yet, and I wasn't sure how I'd handle it if I was. Contrary to what most of the Council thought, I had _issues_ with taking human lives.

"They want to get into the universe to break it. Or maybe break it to get in. Either way, they're bad news. And that one hates me because I burned it to 'death' after my stepfather sicced it on me when I resisted his attempts to turn me into a mind-controlled puppet and ran away."

Dumbledore blinked, but didn't interrupt. I'm not sure if he was reacting to my finger-quotes when I said 'death', or if he was just surprised at what had been loose in his school.

"And the woman was the Leanansidhe, second in power in the Winter Court of the Fae, and handmaiden to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Mab. Completely nuts by mortal standards, immensely powerful, and also my godmother." I finished.

Dumbledore blinked again.

Eventually, he commented "You have led an interesting life, Harry."

I snorted. "That's a fairly severe understatement."

"So... what is your monster likely to do with Voldemort?" he asked.

"My..? Trust me, he's not mine. But the Walker might hang around with Moldy for a while, for the chance at mayhem if nothing else, but I'm not sure. He's not likely to work with him long-term, though. And he'll make sure Moldy knows it. He Who Walks Behind isn't much for people skills." I said.

Dumbledore nodded seriously, obviously thinking hard.

Eventually, he said "You had best go and explain things as best you are able to Miss Granger and Mister Weasley, Harry."

I winced, but nodded. Hopefully I could come up with something that wouldn't make them think I'd jumped my trolley.

Just as I was turning to go, though, Dumbledore called me back one last time. "There is one other thing, Harry..."

*****

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Ron and Hermione were both lurking in the shadows of the gargoyles. Ron promptly yanked me in the direction of the closest secret passage, giving Hermione a longsuffering look before begrudgingly moving aside enough for her to join us.

"Well?" they demanded simultaneously, then stopped to glare at one another, flustered.

I must've made a slight noise, because they both rounded on me to demand... once again simultaneously... "What are _you_ sniggering at?!"

Thankfully, this time I managed to choke off the laughter before they managed to get over the fact that they were talking in stereo. Before either of them could start yelling at either me or each other, I interrupted.

"I can't say much..." I started, before Hermione interrupted.

"You're doing it _**again**_!" she snapped.

I blinked at her.

"And it's not even very good." she complained. "Every time you start trying to be serious, or grown-up or something, you put on this horrible fake American accent. My father's cousin married an American, and we've visited them. I've _been_ to Boston, I know what an American accent is supposed to sound like!"

I blinked at her some more, mouthing "... Boston?" after a moment.

Ron made a small noise of impatience. "I'm not sure that's important right now, Hermione... the important thing is, was that _really_ You-Know-Who that that... monster... thing... let loose?"

"That was Professor Quirrell that it was dangling..." I said carefully.

Ron shook his head, but surprisingly, it was Hermione that answered. "I saw it too. There was another face on the back of the Professor's head, and it looked _strange_."

Ron nodded. "It looked like what I've heard You-Know-Who looks like, when my parents didn't think I was listening."

I swallowed. "That was probably him, then. I didn't see it, thanks to that guy slamming my head into the wall, but it fits with what I know."

At that, Hermione actually rounded on me, her hands planted on her hips, and was interrupted by Ron.

"You know some awfully funny stuff, mate." was all he said.

I sagged against the wall and groaned.

This, apparently, was all the invitation Hermione needed to unload. "When that monster was chasing us, and we all tripped over one another? You can't do regular magic with a wand, but you did wandless magic, and that's supposed to be _really_ complicated! And you yelled '_Fuego_', and that's **not** a spell. And that crazy woman acted like she knew you, and she apparated into Hogwarts, and then out again, and you can't do **that** either!"

After watching her patiently until she finished, I raised an eyebrow at her. "All done?"

She fumed, but nodded silently, staring at me with narrowed eyes.

"Good. I can't afford to be interrupted right now, because I don't know how much I can tell you about things yet. Not..." I held up a hand to head off their indignant reactions, "because I don't trust you, but because they're completely insane and I don't have any _proof_." I hesitated. "I'll do my best to explain what I can. For the stuff you already asked, the crazy lady wasn't actually human, so the rules are a probably a bit different for her. I do know her, but the whys and hows are just too complicated for me to deal with right now. I'm not even sure I want to _think_ about them right now." I made a face. "As for the wandless magic... yeah, I'm just going to have to ask you to trust me for now- it's not actually what you think."

Ron nodded slowly. "Alright, Harry."

That was all he said, but there was a surprising amount of meaning in those four brief syllables. An oddly familiar loadout, actually. I'd heard pretty much that exact same phrase before, when one of my (male) friends was trusting me even though they didn't have all the information, not only to take care of the immediate problem, but to provide them with the information when I was able. Murph would probably call it 'speaking Martian'.

Hermione, on the other hand, was a) not a guy, and b) not as close a friend.

"You're going to have to give me a bit more to go on than that if you expect me to be able to help out." she said a bit tartly.

Huh. So maybe she was a pretty good friend. Or else she was just itching to do some research, since she already had her 'library face' on. Even so, I hesitated.

"And you don't have to go looking at me like that, either." she added. "You helped me when Malfoy was being a twit on the train, and you tried to save both Ron and me when that monster was coming after us. I could see your face when you did... whatever you did that made all that fire. You're quite mad, you know. You weren't worried for yourself at all, but when it started coming after _us_, you went insane."

I shrugged uncomfortably. "It's a thing I have. And if you want to try doing some research..." I paused again. After a long moment, I said "... try looking up monsters that come from outside this universe. Not just another world, or something, but somewhere else entirely. Most of what I know about them calls them 'Outsiders', but they might be called something else in the old books."

A brief smirk curved my lips. "And if you find out anything interesting about an American wizard called 'Harry Dresden', let me know."

*****

The next schoolday dragged on an uncomfortably long time. Not because of the routine or anything- I'm pretty comfortable with routine, as a general rule- but because of anticipation. Apparently Dumbledore had turned the screws on Fudge pretty hard, because he had told me that Sirius was being released _tonight_. I'm not even sure that Wormtail had been convicted yet, but that wasn't really a problem, since he was pretty clearly alive, and therefore Sirius hadn't murdered him.

Eventually, though, classes dragged to a close, and I started to make my way down to the entrance hall.

As I tromped down one of the stairways, irritably contemplating burning Hogwarts down just so I could make them build it on one freaking level, or at least introduce them to the concept of 'elevators', Fred Weasley popped out of one of the secret passages, closely followed by Ron.

The older Weasley nodded companionably to me. "Y'know, Harry, for a firstie, you've got some interesting ideas. George's actually working on that ear thing right now, I just came to drop Ronnie off so he'd bug off and leave us alone to work."

I nodded back at Fred, and grinned a little as Ron turned to smack his brother for the 'Ronnie' crack. Fred just dodged nimbly and vanished back into the passage.

Ron muttered something uncharitable about Fred, then turned to me. "Hey Harry. I talked to Nearly Headless Nick at lunch, he said that Sirius Black, the guy that's getting let out of Azkaban today, knew your dad, and that Scabbers... er, Peter... did too!"

I nodded slowly, not entirely sure where to take that.

"Yeah. From what I know, those three, along with a guy named Remus, all hung out together in school. They knew Snape, too, and he hated all of them. Sirius Black is my godfather, too." I said when he hadn't said anything for a bit.

Ron stared at me blankly for a minute. "So you've got a total nutter for your godfather?"

"No, he's not a nutter- weren't you paying attention? Peter Pettigrew was the one who murdered all those people. Sirius was framed." I said, slightly annoyed.

Ron put up his hands. "Right, right. So what are you doing?"

"Dumbledore thinks it'd be a good idea for me to go with him to meet Sirius when he gets out of jail." I told him.

"Huh. Really? D'you think I could..." he started, but I shook my head.

"Dumbledore's going because he's Dumbledore, and he thinks I should go because Sirius and my dad were friends. But he doesn't think anyone else should be there, since Sirius's been locked up with Dementors for ten years."

Ron shuddered. "Gotcha. Well, if you need a hand later..." he trailed off.

"Thanks Ron. I'll catch you later."

With that, I turned and hurried down the stairs. Dumbledore wasn't really the kind of guy you kept waiting.

*****

Which is how, less than an hour later, I found myself standing on a miserable, wind-whipped and spray-drenched peninsula, already shivering and soaked to the skin as I glared at the North Sea. Dumbledore was standing next to me, apparently perfectly dry and comfortable.

I shifted from foot to foot, then started pacing. I had met more than one con just out of the joint, and they were always a little squirelly. I wasn't exactly looking forward to meeting someone just out of magic prison, especially one that was as nasty as Azkaban supposedly was, even if the con in question was the closest thing little Harry had in the world to a father.

After a few minutes, Dumbledore shook his head, looking at me oddly.

"You know, Harry, I do not believe I will ever get used to the way that you shift from child to adult mannerisms more easily than most change their socks." he said.

I kept pacing, not really sure how to respond to that. It actually tied back to something else that had been bothering me, but a flicker of motion interrupted my train of thought. Then the big black auror with the odd name popped into existence, followed almost instantly by a tall, wild-haired man with sunken, maddened eyes and a waxy pallor to what skin you could see through the matted tangle of beard.

Those brilliant, crazed eyes fixed on Dumbledore the instant that he had fully materialized, and he spoke in the halting jerks of one who had not had to use his voice in far too long. "Dumbledore? It's... over then, is it? It's finally over?"

"Yes, Sirius. It is at last over. Peter has been caught, and justice will be done." Dumbledore said gravely, although I noticed he subtly stressed the statement that Pettigrew was facing justice.

Sirius gave a motion that was partway between a twitch and a nod, then shook his head, clearly trying to get some control. Then his unsettling eyes locked onto me.

"... James?" he said after a moment. "No, not James, too long..."

He shook his head violently. "I'm... sorry. You must be Harry. It's been a very... a **very** long time. Too long."

Sirius hesitated for a moment. "You have Lily's eyes."

I nodded, watching him warily. Then I realized that I had somehow ended up slightly behind Dumbledore, and made a face. Then I stepped pointedly around him and stared straight into Sirius' nose.

... yes, nose. I wasn't about to risk a soulgaze with someone who'd spent the last decade having their brains scrambled by... demonic whatevers.

I was a bit surprised when that prompted Sirius to give a raspy chuckle. "Definitely James' son, though. Fearless to the last."

Dumbledore chuckled as well, although I kind of suspected it was for slightly different reasons. "We'd best get back to Hogwarts. Sirius, I have made arrangements for you to stay in Hogsmeade for a time, should you feel the need to do so."

Sirius nodded and managed to say "Thank you."

And with a wave of Dumbledore's wand, we were gone.

*****

I didn't see much of Sirius for about a week after that. I'm not sure if he was just trying to readjust to life on the outside, or if Dumbledore had talked to him as promised and he was avoiding me out of shock or something.

I didn't have much time to worry about it, though. Things were starting to happen.

I hadn't even managed to start breakfast when the first shock hit- Hedwig dropped a thick bundle of papers in a plain brown wrapper on my head, hooting in soft satisfaction when it was actually heavy enough to make me faceplant into the bowl of whitish goop that was being passed off as breakfast that morning.

I scrubbed glop off my glasses with the edge of my robe, ignoring both Hermione's disapproving sniff and Hedwig's somewhat smug exit, and shoved them back on, staring at the package in some surprise.

After it failed to explode, I yanked on the string holding it shut. Then I jerked my hand away, instinctively jamming my finger in my mouth and sucking on the small cut. A drop of blood that had gotten away before the finger-suck... I gave my hand a disgusted look and pulled my finger out, ignoring the welling redness... fell on the wrapper, and the string untied itself, a brief flicker of half-seen energies evaporating into the great hall.

Huh.

So that was how Rita Skeeter had avoided lynching for so long. It didn't take a genius to figure that if anyone other than the intended recipient tried to open the parcel, it would do something fairly nasty to them.

I flipped open the folder and leafed through the papers inside, gradually slowing down in stunned amazement.

Wow. Just... wow.

I'd known going in that Umbridge was a piece of work- you didn't force children to basically carve open their own hands or run the wizard Gestapo without a fairly deep-rooted case of the crazies, after all- but stars and stones, apparently there was no such thing as psychological testing in wizarding Britain.

I flipped through a few more pages.

And apparently it helped when you could run your own coverups- made for consistency.

I stifled a low whistle as my respect for Skeeter crawled up a few grudging notches. Apparently she had that most coveted ability amongst scandalmongers- the ability to ferret out _juuuuust_ enough truth to make her more libelous accusations brutally difficult to refute.

Not that Umbridge seemed to need much help in painting herself black, if even half the stuff that Skeeter had sent me was true. I shook my head and tied the packet shut again, and then a small, evil smile slid across my lips. If Skeeter could do as much damage as she did with twisted half-truths, what on Earth was going to come out of that poison pen of hers with _this_ much ammunition?

Absently spooning white glop into my mouth, I wondered how long I'd have to wait.

*****

As it turned out, not long.

In point of fact, it coincided with shock number two, once again at breakfast, a couple of days later.

I got to breakfast a few minutes late, to be confronted by a borderline-hysterical Ron, who shoved a newspaper into my face so hard he nearly knocked me off the bench.

"Have you seen this?" he demanded once I'd managed to shove myself back upright.

I pried the paper out of his fingers and turned it 'round so that I actually _could_ see it, and started scanning.

The first thing I saw, given that I was looking for it, was Rita Skeeter's byline. That, in itself, wasn't surprising. The headline, though, was.

"**THE DARKNESS ABOVE**", the paper trumpeted in massive letters, with a secondary headline screaming "**High Ministry Official Complicit in Azkaban Breakout**". The front-page photo wasn't of Dolores Umbridge, like I expected, but of the Dark Mark, burning above a fortress I had seen less than a week ago.

Azkaban.

I read a bit faster.

Once you stripped out the not-quite-libellous accusations, just-between-us gossip column asides, and invective... I don't think Umbridge was ever mentioned without at least six nasty adjectives... the general gist was that Umbridge, aside from such minor matters as murdering a goblin child (covered up and paid off), deliberately torpedoing diplomatic relations with non-human races on three separate occasions (and, not-so-coincedentally, ruining a rival in the process two of those times and netting a promotion), and a history of abusive behaviour stretching back to her early childhood, had gone after Rita Skeeter directly.

Seems that one of Rita's editors was among Umbridge's carefully-groomed network of contacts, and he had let slip one night over drinks that she was next on Skeeter's list. Skeeter had slyly insinuated that Umbridge kept a stock of spiked drinks for just such an occasion, and, while there wasn't any proof, I could believe it.

Once Umbridge had found this out, she promptly turned to what seemed to be her favourite toys- Dementors.

My respect for Skeeter crawled up another reluctant notch. She might be an indiscriminate scandalmongering hag with delusions of elegance, but she had guts, if nothing else. She'd actually managed to snag one of Umbridge's communiques to Azkaban. Even if the Dementors weren't likely to notice a random beetle, she'd still had to break into the legendary prison.

Well, insofar as a beetle had to break into anywhere, at any rate.

Anyhow, like I'd said, 'one' of Umbridge's communiques. When the first hit hadn't worked, either to kill Skeeter or scare her off, Umbridge had tried again. Three times. And with more Dementors every time.

By the end, she was half-emptying the prison of guards, and Moldy had noticed. And, naturally, taken advantage. He might not have been at full power, but with Azkaban running on a skeleton crew... or at least some kind of undead, I'm still not sure what Dementors were... he didn't _have_ to be.

The rest of the article was some blithering about how Umbridge was an incompetent menace and should be removed from office, and, for preference, tarred and feathered. The final bit was a brief list of the Death Eaters that had broken out, which I glanced over indifferently. At least at first.

Problem was, Peter Pettigrew's name didn't appear on the list of escapees. I was about 90% certain that he'd ended up in there, but for some reason, he hadn't left with his master.

Something wasn't adding up.

*****

Of course, no matter what universe I'm in, it hates me, and I wasn't allowed any time to try and figure it out.

Cue a new day, and shock number three, once again at breakfast.

I was seriously starting to develop a phobia of mornings.

This time, it was coming down to the great hall and finding Sirius Black sitting at the Gryffindor table waiting for me.

He looked... well, less crazed, not to put too fine a point on it. He'd shaved and gotten a haircut, and his cheeks were less hollow. He was still too thin, and his eyes were still too bright, but he'd at least upgraded from 'crazy homeless person'.

Sirius gave me a nod as I sat down next to him, and I nodded in return.

"I've had a talk with Dumbledore about... you." he said without preamble. "Is..." he glanced around warily. "Is it true?"

I resisted the urge to glance around as well and just nodded, feeling fairly justified in making an assumption about what he was talking about. There weren't a lot of things that could cause that much hesitation, after all, and being told that your godson was being possessed by a wizard from another universe who coincidentally had the same first name, and where you were a children's book character, was probably one of the top three.

Before he could say anymore, Ron flopped onto the bench next to me, elbowing me amiably in greeting and grabbing for the syrup- thankfully, this morning breakfast was flapjacks, something I could actually recognize as food. I elbowed him back and glanced over at Sirius again.

He'd closed up somehow. He wasn't _really_ acting differently, but at the same time, he was. Apparently he planned to keep my secret, for the moment at least.

"So, Harry." he started. "I've gotten permission to take you on a day-trip into London on the weekend, if you'd like to go. Kind of a way to get to know you again, after all this time."

I didn't have to force the grin that spread on my face at the news. Granted, it probably had a bit more of an edge than the average kid would have upon being told that, but oh well.

"Sounds brilliant!" I said eagerly.

Sirius gave me a strange look, but managed to smile back while Ron made envious comments. We finished the meal amiably enough, making plans to start at Diagon Alley, and I made noises about wanting to see 'some bits of Muggle London'.

*****

I didn't really get the chance to build up a lot of anticipation for the trip, since Hermione was buttonholing me every chance she got to 'do Charms homework'.

Only thing was, I'd accidentally overheard Flitwick telling her with some frustration that as far as he could see, my wandwork was near-perfect, and there were no problems with my pronunciation that he could catch.

So Hermione, for lack of any better ideas, had defaulted to the good old standby of 'make me practice until my wand arm falls off'.

And it was during one of those practice sessions that Dumbledore appeared with a thin, shabby-looking man who sported a thin mustache and the marks of premature aging. Dumbledore nodded cordially to both Hermione and me.

"Miss Granger, I must regretfully intrude. I would like Harry to meet someone." he started. "Harry, this is Remus Lupin, an old friend of your father's. He came to visit Sirius, and it occurred to me that he might be able to teach you something."

I gave Lupin a curious look, glad for the excuse to let my wand fall to my side and let my aching shoulder rest. I wondered vaguely if the wizarding world had come up with a cure for carpal tunnel, but concentrated on the apparent adults in the room.

Lupin opened his mouth, then hesitated, blinking. "... Harry, where are your eyebrows?"

I rolled my eyes and shot Hermione a disgusted look, but she just shrugged calmly.

"I thought his difficulty might be a mental block, so I've been letting a bit of the explosions go, to help get him over it." she said blandly.

Lupin blinked again. "Er, yes. Anyhow, Harry, Professor Dumbledore has told me a bit about what's been happening to you, and we agree that, even if you're having difficulty with other charms, there's a particularly difficult one you urgently need to learn. It's called the Patronus charm, and it's the only way that you can defend yourself from Dementors."

I felt a thrilling tingle of excitement when he said that, and bit it back to try and focus on what was being said. I wasn't sure why I was getting so worked up about trying to learn yet another spell, but I tended to agree that it'd be a good thing to know, especially since, reading between the lines in the papers, Fudge had apparently lost his mind. The Minister for Magic was sending Dementors _everywhere_. There was a report of some woman finding one in her linen closet, for crying out loud.

And there were hints that the Dementors weren't exactly trying too hard to find the escapees, either.

I dragged my mind back to the task at hand.

"I'm willing to try, sir." was all I said.

Hermione's jaw worked briefly as her instinctive desire to comply with authority figures fought her desire to nag me into competence, but in the end the authority figure thing won out, even if just barely, and she nodded. She and Dumbledore left together, and I glanced around the empty classroom that my latest round of inept spell-slinging had 'redecorated' into something resembling the surface of the moon.

"So, uhm, you've heard that I've been having trouble with, well, most spells, right?" I said.

Remus let slip a tired chuckle, and nodded. "Dumbledore hasn't told me much, but he did say that you could be trusted with the full story of what's going on."

That got my attention. "So he's got the Order of the Phoenix back together already?"

The werewolf gave me a sharp look. "He also said that you had an unnerving tendency to know things you probably shouldn't. Why don't we talk while we work? You really should know how to defend yourself from Dementors. Also, the Order uses their Patronuses to communicate, so if you're planning to work with us, it would be good for you to know."

I ignored the heavily-implied '_whoever you really are_' in his tone, and gave him a brief, slightly brittle grin.

"Well, here goes noth..." I started, then stopped as a thought hit me. "Are you coming with Sirius and me to London on the weekend?"

He shook his head a bit too abruptly, avoiding my eyes. "No. My 'furry little problem' comes around about this time every month."

My expression must have been pretty blank, because he gave me a startled look after a moment, then shook his head and laughed ruefully. "Sorry, I just... you look so much like James..."

He got ahold of himself and faced me squarely again. "I can't come with you this time, Harry, I'm sorry."

I slapped my forehead as realization hit. "Oh. It's a full moon this weekend, isn't it?"

Remus' brow furrowed, and he said "Maybe we should concentrate on the Patronus for now."

*****

I spent the day before the London trip half out of my mind with anticipation. I wanted to go in the evening, where we could attract less attention. Given how wizards tended to interact with the muggle world, I didn't really want to chance running around in broad daylight with someone who thought of a rifle as a kind of 'muggle wand' and might want to experiment with it.

Granted, Sirius seemed to be pretty level-headed about most things, but he was still wizard-born, and hadn't had the chance to see much of _either_ world over the last decade or so. Best not to take any chances.

Arrangements at Hogwarts were surprisingly simple, consisting largely of McGonnagal admonishing Sirius not to have me back too late. I grabbed the things I had bundled in my invisibility cloak, and with that, we hiked down the pathway and out of the Hogwarts grounds, where we vanished with a ***CRACK***.

A split-second later, I stumbled out of the alleyway behind the Leaky Cauldron into Diagon Alley proper, pale and trying not to retch.

Sirius followed, rubbing the back of his neck and looking apologetic. "Sorry. Not as smooth as Dumbledore, even when I'm in practice."

"Bluh." I managed.

That earned me another of Sirius' raspy chuckles. He wasn't entirely at ease with me yet, which was fair enough- even though I'd been in this body for months now, _**I**_ wasn't entirely at ease with me- but he did seem to be loosening up a bit.

We went into the Leaky Cauldron so I could catch my breath. As we passed into the tavern, I glanced at the sky and thought briefly of Lupin- the moon was rising already, huge and low and orange. What Ebenezar always called a harvest moon.

Thoughts of my old mentor had me briefly wondering how the White Council would deal with Voldemort, and I couldn't help but give a nasty little chuckle. The first wizarding war would probably have lasted about as long as it took Donald Morgan's sword to find old Moldy's neck. Morgan was an ass to the last, but one thing was for sure- black magic didn't last too long with him around.

Sirius and I sat on some stools at the bar, where I made sure to keep my bangs hanging low over the scar, hopefully avoiding any annoying questions.

The bartender simply nodded to us, his wrinkled face beaming as he drew a glass for each of us. I found myself wishing I was in a body that was old enough to drink. Of course, while I was wishing, I wished I could have some of Mac's ale, instead of this... I gave the stuff in the glass a cautious sniff... whatever it was.

Sirius just grinned, slapped some coins on the counter, and slammed his drink back. "It's good to be back, Tom." he said.

The bald old bartender nodded again. "Welcome back, Mr. Black. It's good to see you, and sorry I was to hear that you were sent up wrongfully all those years ago. Terrible shame, that."

He brushed the coins back towards Sirius. "On the house, Sirius. May not make amends, but at least it's something."

Sirius managed a tired smile, and we sat comfortably for a while.

*****

Dusk was well underway when we came out into Muggle London. It was late enough in the year to get dark surprisingly early, but that was alright with me- Sirius' cloak could be mistaken for a long coat in this light fairly easily, and anything that kept us from attracting attention was a good thing.

I had done some research as best I could- Hermione had been able to get me some books on gun clubs, along with a London phone directory, so I had at least some idea where to go to buy a rifle or a shotgun. I was hoping that Sirius could help me bypass the registration end of things with a little wand waving. I still flinched when the third law of magic was broken, but it didn't seem to break things (and brains) the way it did back home.

Speaking of which, I should probably explain to Sirius what I was wanting in this part of London. As I turned to face him, my ears popped and the city noise just... went away.

At least mostly. I could still see cars whizzing by, but there was a kind of transluscent sheen over all the buildings, and there were _other_ cars zooming through the streets, with the muggle cars seeming to shift out of the way to allow them passage.

Sirius had frozen when the world shifted, and he had his wand in his hand as his eyes scanned restlessly. I jerked my own wand out and spun in place, searching uneasily for whatever might be coming after us.

Then I froze as the first of the unearthly howls drifted over the rooftops.


	9. Chapter 9

I didn't even have time to ask what it was before Sirius growled "Werewolves."

The first howl was answered by a chorus of howls from at least three different directions.

Sirius stiffened and added "A lot of them. Probably Fenrir Greyback's pack, it's the only one big enough to make that much noise."

I looked around, but when slavering monstrosities failed to spontaneously materialize and chew my face off, I started dragging the invisible bundle off my back.

As I did so, I glanced at Sirius. "How many werewolves at a time do you think you can handle in Snuffles-mode?"

He glanced at me, a bit baffled. "Snuffles?"

"Hell's Bells... that... big black dog-thing you can turn into. The one that looks kind of like a Black D... a Barghest?"

"Probably two or three at best." he said after a brief hesitation. "It looks like somebody's used a variant of the enchantment they put on ministry cars and the Knight Bus to pull us out of phase. There's no way of telling how far it goes, but it feels big."

"I'm guessing you're right. I can't even see anything that looks like the end of this... zone, or whatever it is, although the glowy haze isn't helping much. This has gotta be either a trap or a..." I trailed off as a shrill scream erupted from somewhere off to the left, accompanied by a good deal of snarling. "... diversion." I finished.

Sirius made a face. "If it's a diversion, we have no way of knowing what from. I don't think it's a trap, though. Not a lot of people knew we were coming here, and that long stay in the Leaky Cauldron changed our timetable."

I nodded. "All we can really do is see if we can save anyone who's in here with us and those werewolves, I guess. If we find something, we find something."

Sirius opened his mouth, then closed his mouth, giving me a very strange look.

After a moment, he said "You know, most kids would be panicking right now..."

"Not a kid, not my first time being hunted by werewolves." I snapped.

He looked taken aback, but then pretty much _visibly_ dragged his mind around to the decision that we had more important things to worry about. "Please tell me that if you're planning on taking on a werewolf pack, you at least have something in mind."

"Of course." I finished pulling the invisibility cloak from around my broom and hopped onto it. "Your local version of werewolves aren't terribly smart once they've gone wolfy, are they?"

Sirius hesitated, then shook his head. "Not... exactly. If they can sense a human, they'll go crazy trying to bite them. Other than that, though, they're not _too_ much dumber than normal. Simplified a bit, maybe- animal thoughts and feelings aren't as complicated as human ones."

"Good." I said. "That means that ambushes should be pretty easy. Hop on; if we can get onto the rooftops, it will be easier to isolate different bits of the pack."

I waved an arm at the back of the broom, and Sirius got on. "Well, it's at least as good as any ideas I've got... you know, your calm is **still** a bit unnerving."

I glanced over my shoulder at him. "Would it really help anything if I started freaking out?"

"No, not really." he answered, then muttered something about weirdness that I didn't quite catch.

"Then I'm not going to bother. Besides, when you've been chased by a _loup-garou_, these things really aren't that frightening."

As I spoke, we hovered smoothly off the ground, rising to draw level with the rooftops. Sirius hopped gingerly off onto the oddly wavering glow surrounding the building, but it seemed to support him well enough. His form blurred and shifted, resolving into an enormous black dog. I nodded to him.

"I'm the bait, you're the trap. Between the cloak and my broom, I should be able to avoid the worst of things. Try to stay out of sight and upwind..." I hesitated. "Well, you get the idea. Sorry."

The big dog gave me an aggrieved look, but just nodded in an oddly human gesture. Then he faded into the gloom.

I suppressed the urge to sigh and brought the broom around, scanning for suspicious movement. I swept slowly back and forth, moving towards where we'd last heard the scream, moving slowly enough that I hoped that Sirius could keep up, and thinking we probably should have checked that before we started.

As if on cue, there was a muffled bark from below me and slightly to my left, pitched so that I was the only one likely to be able to hear it. In response, there was another scream, this time from just below us. I grinned tightly and accelerated down into the street.

My wand was in my hand, and I flicked my wrist a few times, trying to loosen it up. In the strange half-light of the glowing buildings, a middle-aged woman had her own wand out, and was firing spells at a trio of hulking pseudo-wolves that had her pinned in a corner.

I swooped down and blew a crater next to the biggest werewolf- apparently Thomas was more right than I wanted to admit when he made fun of my aim- and shot off up over the rooftops.

There was a thunderous explosion of snarling behind me, and then the *whuff* of exhaled air as two sets of claws hit the slate roofing tiles in a scrabbling landing. They'd hit the roof in just one jump? Stars and stones, I was going to have to be more careful than I'd expected.

Then there was a howl from the still-grounded third werewolf, answered from all around the glowing pseudo-city.

If I'd had a hand free, I would've slapped my forehead. I'd worked with Billy and the Alphas for _how_ long? I have no idea to this day how I'd managed to forget that wolves were perfectly capable of communicating long-distance, especially given that I'd pretty much had a werewolf pack for sidekicks for close on to a decade.

As it was, my hands were both firmly glued to the broom as I dodged chimney stacks, cornices, gargoyles, at least one rooftop garden full of trees, AC units, vents, and I'm not sure what all else. London has a frankly **unbelievable** amount of crap on its rooftops.

I flinched at the occasional crashes that suggested that the pursuing wolves had simply bulled through some random bit of old stonework. Probably headfirst. Sirius hadn't been kidding when he'd said they'd go nuts trying to get me.

Then there was a thunderous crash, and a collection of yowls, snarls, and tearing noises nearly drowned out the second crash. That second crash also marked the cutoff of the despairing yelps that had trailed down after the werewolf that Sirius had bodychecked off the eighth floor roof that they had chased me onto.

Another howl from ground level _right_ in front of the building we were on top of made me jump, but Sirius, apparently none the worse for the wear, materialized out of the shadows slightly to my left, this time in human form.

"That worked, but I don't know how many more times it will. There are at least twenty in Greyback's pack, and we just got two of them." he told me.

I just nodded. "Gotta keep trying, not much else we can do."

Sirius nodded in agreement and melted back into the shadows.

The next hour or so was a nightmarish rush of shadows and false light, brief clashes of incredible violence, and a tense game of life-or-death hide-and-seek. After half a dozen fights, we wound up on a fourth-floor rooftop above a restaurant. Sirius was bleeding freely from dozens of scratches and bites, his dark robes in tatters. He didn't seem too worried about infection, though.

"Animals can't contract lycanthropy. I've been a dog every time they've even scratched me, so there's no chance of me being turned." he told me flatly.

Fighting off the urge to wince, I waved a vague hand. "I kind of lost track somewhere in there. Do you have any idea how many there are left?"

On cue, about a dozen howls erupted all around us. I made a face.

"They're not following us up anymore, are they?" I asked.

Sirius had his wand out and was healing the worst of his wounds, but he nodded distractedly. "We both knew it wouldn't work forever." He glanced up at me. "On the other hand, if they're busy 'treeing' us, they won't be running around mauling whoever else is in here with us."

I waved an irritated hand. "No real guarantees we've got all of them."

He nodded again.

"But it's too dangerous to try and go down after them." I finished.

This earned me an ironic smile. "I think they know that too. But we've singed their noses, so they're being wary."

I peered warily over the edge. "More than wary. I can't see them..."

A low growl from behind me snapped my head around. Hulking grey shadows melted out of the darkness on rooftops all around, with at least three on our roof already.

"... anywhere." I finished glumly.

My wand was already out, as was Sirius'. Some small part of my brain noted with interest that Sirius hadn't shifted again, despite the risk of infection. I wondered if it was because he'd had to use that form as a crutch in prison for so long that he was loathe to reassume it, or if he thought he was going to die and wanted to do it as himself, or even if it was just some instinctive wizard thing to face a serious threat with wand in hand.

I didn't have any real time to worry about it, though. Which seemed to be becoming a thing. My wand was in hand, and I yelled the first thing that came to mind, adding the wand motions apparently by instinct- "_Expecto Patronum!_"

Instead of the explosion I'd gotten every time so far, though, I got a thin silver trickle. We hadn't gotten as far as practice in my first session with Lupin, so... uh... huh.

I was still gaping at it when Sirius sent the first werewolf yelping over the edge and stunned the second in the same motion.

That was enough for me to jerk back alert, and the last werewolf on the roof jumped violently as an explosion three feet to its left rattled the glowing... forcefield, or whatever it was, sending glowing ripples in all directions. The werewolf gathered itself and leapt, and time seemed to slow. I could see Sirius whirling out of the corner of my eye, and I knew he wasn't going to make it in time.

So I just barked "_Forzare!_" and slapped the leaping wolf out of the air with a bolt of force.

Normally, I could have punted it halfway to the next county (are they even called that in England?), but even with my child-sized reservoir of magic, I still managed to clear the street and land it sprawling on an opposite rooftop. Two stories up.

"Physics, bitch!" I yelled, almost hopping in place as adrenaline fizzed through my system. "All the strength and speed in the world don't help if you've got no traction!"

Sirius gave me a pained look, and I tried to calm down a little.

That became _exponentially_ easier when the next eight wolves landed on our rooftop almost simultaneously.

As they circled around us in ragged groups, I was torn between wondering how my blood had all been replaced with ice water and noticing that the weird, sourceless light turned every drop of slaver into a brief, splattering jewel.

Yeah, you notice weird things when you're about to die.

The tension was so thick that I could feel it, twisting in my guts and making my eyes water.

Then the lead wolves erupted in a snarling rush, and what I had thought was tension suddenly released with a soundless snap and a brilliant light that shattered into dozens of multicoloured pieces.

A leonine battle-roar erupted from the largest light, echoed by a piping battle cry from the dozens of smaller lights.

"_**FOR THE 'ZA LORD!**_"

... the _hell_?

My huge dog, Mouse, blazing with pale fire, slammed through the lead two werewolves like they weren't even there, skidding to a halt and faced down the pack, ringed with fairy lights. The wolves snarled, a rippling cacophony of angry bandsaws. Then Mouse growled back, drowning them all out with a roaring torrent of sound that actually made the roof-forcefield ripple with light.

On cue, Major-General Toot-Toot Minimus, leader of the 'Za-Lord's Guard, screamed "_Charge!_", and his basketball-sized sphere of blue light rocketed forwards, followed by something that looked like a tangle of lit Christmas lights fired out of a cannon.

The baffled werewolves suddenly howled in pain and frustration as they snapped their jaws on empty air, long, shallow gashes appearing on their snouts and puffs of hair exploding out and billowing in the contrails of the speeding pixie warriors.

At this point, they learned that even _glancing_ away from Mouse was in all probability the last bad idea you would ever have. Three more died messily before they had time to turn their heads back towards him.

By this point, I had snapped out of my shock, and so had Sirius. One of the bigger wolves had apparently managed to keep it together and was leaping towards Mouse' back, but instead found himself turned into a brief comet of burning hair by my shout of "_Protego!_" and the accompanying explosion.

"**Nobody** hurts my dog!" I yelled after the plummeting wolf.

By that point, it was all over but the yelping. Sirius accounted for two more, the pixies got one, and Mouse and I got the last one.

I glanced around, lightly resting one hand on Mouse's ruff (I only had to raise my arm above my shoulder to do it, too), as the little balls of light that made up the core of the 'Za Lord's Guard came to ring around me, with Toot-Toot directly in front of me.

Inside the blue glow, the pixie looked much as he had when I last saw him- a handsome, athletic youth about a foot tall, with his dandelion fluff of flyaway lavender hair mashed under a makeshift helmet- a hollowed out golfball, still, and he seemed to have managed to upgrade his breastplate from an old Pepto-Bismol bottle to what looked like a refitted Coke can or three, mashed into careful layers to provide fairly serious protection for a foot-tall form.

Toot-Toot saluted me, sheathing his sword- a jigsaw blade with a heavily taped handle, no _wonder_ the wolves were yelping- in the same motion.

"Major-General Toot-Toot reporting, milord!" he piped.

Sirius was just shaking his head, looking utterly baffled while I returned Toot-Toot's salute, and said "As you were, Major-General."

"Thank you, milord. The High Lady Archive-Ivy sent us, along with the great demon Mouse, and instructed me on pain of a great deal of pain to tell you that she had sent instructions attached to Mouse' collar before all else." he told me in one breath.

I blinked, then ruffled Mouse' fur and checked his collar, which had a big, heavy oilskin envelope on it. I was a bit perturbed to notice scorch marks on the outside of it, but Mouse just lolled his tongue sardonically at me when I glanced at him.

I managed to untangle the envelope- even Ivy's usual neat, solid knots seemed to have gotten a pretty nasty workout by whatever had happened- but wound up having to get between Toot-Toot and Sirius, who had apparently been prodding the pixie with his wand in utter befuddlement.

"May I slay the dastard, milord?" Toot-Toot demanded, blade in hand and outrage making his voice even more shrill than usual.

I shook my head firmly as Sirius started to smirk, then found his gaze sliding over the partially-filleted werewolf that had been the pixies' handiwork. The smirk faded rapidly at that point.

"No, Toot-Toot. He merely does not understand. I don't think he means any disrespect." I added with a sharp glance at Sirius.

He shook his head mutely, giving me another of those strange, sharp looks that were really starting to get old. Toot-Toot backed down, apparently mollified, at least for the moment.

"Just give me a second, please, Sirius." I said, without really looking at him.

If Ivy had bothered to send an envelope with the group, it meant that it had important information in it. Even the pixies' memories weren't so short they couldn't convey a simple message, if they were sufficiently convinced that it was important.

I rattled the envelope open and looked at it. I felt a brief pang of disappointment that there weren't any copies of the novels in there like I'd been kind of hoping, but it was really my own fault for forgetting to ask for them.

Then I glanced up, and caught the look in Sirius' eye. I frowned, and turned to fully face him.

I motioned first to him, then to Toot. "Sirius Black, wizard of London and member of the Order of the Phoenix, may I present Major-General Toot-Toot Minimus, warrior wyldfae and chief of the 'Za Lord's Guard?"

I gave him a bit of a look as I said it, bowing between them. Fae tend to set a great deal of store in formality and, well, courtly mannerisms, really. They, like much of the supernatural world (in my world, anyhow) were very old-world in their dealings with both one another and with mortals, and it paid to give that lip service, at the very least.

Thankfully, Sirius picked up on it quickly.

He bowed to Toot, bringing his wand up in a strange, arcane salute as he straightened, and said "It is my honour."

Toot nodded firmly, his sense of propriety appeased, and returned Sirius' bow smartly, returning the wand-salute with his sword.

Sirius was still staring at Toot and the others in wonderment, but Toot had zipped over and was prodding my arm, prompting me to check the envelope once more.

I popped it open, and pulled out a handful of paper, written in Ivy's tidy, childish cursive. I craned it around, trying to find an angle that would let me read it clearly in the surreal, sourceless half-light. Eventually, I managed to make out:

_Dear Harry:_

_I regret that I was unable to find any copies of the Harry Potter novels in time to send them, but time was of the essence. Also, knowing you, you will have disarranged things to the point that they would be functionally useless by this point in any case._

I made a face at that. Apparently the kid knew me only too well.

_Kincaid has insisted on bringing us both to Chicago while you are away- apparently there are lingering feelings for Ms. Murphy._

And that got another face, this time with a lot less ironic amusement.

_I do agree that our presence here is sensible, however. We should be able to maintain order here, for the most part. Kincaid's reputation is very nearly as fearsome as yours, and, with all due respect, he is somewhat more efficient than you tend to be._

_Ms. Murphy had been able to recover body before we arrived, with the help of your apprentice. It would appear that only your soul has travelled, and your body appeared to be largely intact, if rather vacant. Thankfully, this was easily solved, as you had a spare spirit lying around._

I stopped reading for a moment. A spare spirit lying around..? Huh. Murph must've let them into my apartment, but what spirit were they...

The next thing I knew, the papers had fallen from my nerveless fingers, Sirius was shaking me, and Toot-Toot was kicking me in the nose.

"Harry! Harry! Are you alright? You went all... I thought you'd been hit by some kind of curse!" Sirius exclaimed.

I shook my head tensely. "I've _**got**_ to get back. _**NOW**_."

All I could think of was one simple fact. Ivy, contrary to her usual wisdom beyond her years, had put Bob. The. Freaking. Skull. Into my body. Bob the Skull. Bob the disembodied spirit of Air and Intellect, the laboratory assistant, the massively knowledgeable magical encyclopaedia. And also the amoral, perverted sex fiend.

"NOW!" I repeated, making a sharp slashing motion with my hand, trying desperately to tear open a portal to the Nevernever.

Toot's eyes bugged out as he realized what I was doing. "Milord, no! We are alread in the Nev..."

The world turned inside out, the sourceless glow rushing inwards all around me to erupt out again in a silent explosion of eye-searing not-quite-white.

When my head stopped spinning, Mouse was licking my face while giving me a disapproving look, and we were all lying sprawled around on a perfectly ordinary London rooftop, with the off-white glow conspicuously absent.

"Oh." I said.

Toot-Toot, who had been gathering the papers that Ivy had sent- apparently she had _seriously_ impressed on the little guy that I needed to read them- glanced up at me and nodded. "Indeed, milord."

Sirius groaned and hauled himself up onto one elbow. "I'd been wondering how we were going to get out of there..."

He paused. Then, unexpectedly, he grinned. "I can see that hanging around with you is going to be just as interesting as it was with James."


End file.
